


and i'm trying my hardest not to fall

by surexit



Series: Dan and Lewis [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: M/M, Original Slash, Romance, all of the awkward
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-30
Updated: 2011-10-30
Packaged: 2017-10-25 02:15:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/270621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/surexit/pseuds/surexit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Growing up is a slow process.</p><p>"Of course, this sort of colour is also designed to indicate social class, which, although we British are far too squeamish to say so, still fascinates most of us.” (Re: the papers quoting murder victim Joanna Yeates parents’ house price, Sally Baker, Feeedback, Times Jan 8 2011)</p>
            </blockquote>





	and i'm trying my hardest not to fall

**Author's Note:**

> Almost all of the blame for this goes to listedheart/radioaches.
> 
> All my thanks to yellowteddysuit and psuedo_catalyst on LJ, who were fantastic, wonderful, charming betas.
> 
> Mild warning for casual derogatory language. Further notes [here](http://surexit.dreamwidth.org/19905.html).

"So where are you going for uni?" They've been leaning against the wall in a quiet corner of the party for five minutes or so, swapping inconsequential small talk which Dan very much hopes is leading towards at least a snog. He doesn't know the person who lives in this house, and he doesn't think his new acquaintance does either. It's just one of those parties, in the long post-A-Level summer days, that everyone who lives in the postcode seems to end up at.

The skinny boy - Lewis, he'd introduced himself as in a mumble - narrows his eyes a little. "I'm not."

"Oh." It isn't meant to be an awkward response, but somehow it becomes one, a small pool of silence spreading out where the questions which he honestly didn't even intend to ask can be heard. _Why not? Everyone goes to university, why not you?_ Lewis is clearly hearing them. His long fingers, which had been loose and easy on the neck of his beer bottle, are now slightly tense. "Well," Dan says, stumbling to fill the gap which he hadn't realised he was creating, "what do you do?"

"I work in Tesco's."

"Do you enjoy it?" Dan says automatically, his standard question about people's jobs when he’s talking to his parents’ friends. It conveys interest in them as a person, without the necessity of actually understanding the details of what they do. Of course, in this conversation, it causes Lewis' eyes to narrow further, and Dan to flinch as he hears the inanity of it echoing back to him. "I mean," he continues, examining his own drink, "I hope it's not... is it awful?"

"No. It's a job."

"Of course. Good thing to have, I expect. I've never really. Had one, I mean." His voice gets weaker, trails off under Lewis' hard-eyed stare.

“Yeah,” Lewis says finally, after an awkward moment or two. “Good thing to have.”

Dan can’t really see any way to improve this conversation, and he takes advantage of seeing a school acquaintance passing the through the room. “Liam!” he calls, and then says apologetically to Lewis, “Sorry, man, just got to...”

“Yeah, sure,” Lewis says, and now he’s pulling at the label of his beer bottle with fretful movements. Dan hesitates a moment, watching the graceful twist of his long fingers with a slight hint of regret, but he feels like an idiot and Lewis thinks he’s an idiot. He nods a farewell, and moves towards Liam.

***

"Shouldn't it be beside the pasta sauces?" Titan looks around the supermarket with a helpless air.

"Which are where, Tite?" Dan feels similarly lost. He hates this kind of supermarket, where the aisles go on forever and ever and the shop is designed to provide for your every need, so you don't ever have to leave the safe haven of shiny floors. His mum wants him to come home with pesto, and this giant Tesco is on the way home from the boathouse, otherwise Dan wouldn’t have set foot in here.

Titan checks his watch. "Come on, I have to be home within the next twenty minutes, and you're going to lose your lift if you dither much more."

"Hang on, wanker," Dan mutters, and then says "'Scuse me," to the woman in the Tesco uniform walking down the aisle. "'Scuse me, where do you keep the pesto?"

She frowns. "Pesto? What's that?"

"It's, like, for pasta? Like, crushed up basil and nuts, I think?"

She's looking very dubious. "Maybe Aisle 12? Pasta sauces?"

"Thank you," Dan says, and waits until they've turned the corner away from her before looking at Titan. "Who the fuck doesn't know what pesto is?"

"Oh my God, I _know_." Titan is grinning. "For fuck's sake, _pesto_. Sorry, mate," he adds to the boy in uniform trying to manoeuvre around them with a trolley of bread.

"I mean, it's such a basic." Dan looks over at Titan, and blinks when he realises that the boy with the bread is... what was his name? Lewis? Yeah, Lewis, with the hands, from that party. And he doesn't look friendly. Dan rewinds through the conversation he’s just had with Titan and winces internally.

"Hi," Dan says awkwardly.

"Mmm," Lewis says, looking back at his bread.

"Uh," Dan replies.

Titan steps forward, holding out his hand, because that's what Titan does. Titan is charming and he's a people person. "Hi, I'm Titan." Titan is also very posh, and Dan is a little surprised that he's never really noticed that until now, when Lewis is blinking and extending one narrow hand.

"Lewis," he offers, mumbling the same way he did when he introduced himself to Dan. "I... work here?"

"How do you know Dan?" Titan asks, and the look he gives Dan tells him he's welcome to join the conversation _any time_.

"We don't, really!" Dan says, a shade too vehement, and feels his cheeks heat. Thank God no one can tell. "Lewis was at that thing two Fridays ago."

"Oh, Bea's thing?" Yeah, Dan remembers now, Titan was the only person he knew there who had actually been invited to the party, rather than just showing up. "Banter. How do you know her?"

Lewis shakes his head, and glances at Dan. "Don't at all. There was a text going round, said some - some girl was having a party and there was lots of booze."

Titan laughs, hearty and open, and Dan manages a chuckle. He really wants to know what adjective Lewis was going to put in front of 'girl'. He would bet money on something like 'rich', and it makes him feel suddenly, angrily defensive. Lewis has been judging him since they met, it's not _his_ fault his parents have money, for God's sake.

"We've gotta go," he says, and he knows it's the wrong tone again, too abrupt. "Tite, you need to get home?"

"Oh yeah, sure, just, pesto, right mate?"

"Yeah. Aisle 12, she said."

"It's actually not," Lewis interrupts, eyes hard on Dan again. "Aisle 8." He sounds almost challenging.

"Oh. Thank you." Dan tries a smile, which doesn’t get returned. Lewis turns back to shelving bread with a tight nod at the two of them, and they leave, with Dan trying not to feel Titan’s speculative eyes on him.

***

Titan doesn't really say anything, but Dan expects him to, is tensing against it. When, eventually, they're in the car, driving towards the bridge that will take them to Dan's house, and Titan says, "Hey, so, Lewis," Dan is horrified to hear himself snap, "I don't know him _at all_."

He can practically hear Titan's eyebrows raising, but visually confirms it anyway. "Hey, sure. Just." Slight, sideways grin. "Fit, right?"

The 'right?' is Titan's masculinity preserver. He will happily support Dan's appreciation of the male form, because Titan is easy-going and sunny and basically an excellent mate, but he will always defer to Dan's judgement of male attraction, as though if he starts to admit that he is theoretically capable of discerning whether a man is good-looking or not, he will wake up tomorrow mysteriously gay. Dan's pretty sure he doesn't even know he's doing it.

So right now Dan's torn between encouraging every glimpse of independent ability in picking good-looking men, or denying that the thought had ever crossed his mind about Lewis.

He gives in with a sigh, slouching further down in the passenger seat and picking up Titan's iPod. "Yeah, good call, well fit."

"That how you met?"

"...Yeah," Dan says, flicking through a playlist called, for some reason, _johnny says thanks :)_. "I was looking to pull."

"But?"

"But he's a chav and I offended him."

"Not really a _chav_ ," Titan says.

"Whatever." Silence falls.

"How did you offend him?" Titan asks, when they're almost at Dan's road.

"I don't know. Whatever, I just asked where he was going for uni. And he's not."

"Really?" Titan doesn't sound disapproving, just a little surprised. Dan kicks the dashboard a little, wishing he had been able to respond like Titan when he was talking to Lewis, rather than somehow inadvertently creating whatever yawning chasm of social awkwardness had opened up during that conversation.

"I don't think he can afford it," he adds grudgingly, when Titan doesn't say anything else. "Or maybe he hasn't got good enough results."

"Maybe he doesn't want to." Titan pulls into an empty space three doors down from Dan, and glances at Dan. "Which playlist are you looking at?"

"Doesn't want to?" Dan's a little diverted by the thought. "Um." He glances down, and then makes a face. " _Blowjob music_ , apparently, what the fuck, Tite?"

Titan laughs one of his hearty laughs. "Michaela made it, Danny, don't try to hide your jealousy."

"Titan, it's got Dizzee Rascal on it." He scrolls a little further. "Jesus fucking Christ, along with the Backstreet Boys, what _are_ you?"

"This is your stop, D-dog, out you get." Titan gives him a gentle shove, still grinning ear-to-ear. "See you tomorrow, yeah?"

"Yeah, what time?" Dan says, pushing back against the shove but reaching into the backseat to grab his bag.

"Hendon told us seven."

"Hendon's a prick."

"Hendon's got one more race before we all fuck off to uni and he has to promote the Lower Sixths. And they're a bunch of retards, so let's give him his moment of glory. I'll pick you up at 6, alright?" Another shove, and Dan lets this one tumble him onto the pavement. "Make sure you eat your porridge," Titan calls before he pulls out, and Dan flicks him a V and then heads to his house, fumbling for his keys.

***

There's something a little familiar about the silhouette ahead of him, and Dan frowns as he gains on the runner and realises who it is. For fuck's sake, he's tired and sweaty and hungry and by the looks of the pace Lewis is keeping, they're aiming for about the same finish point, the benches beside the Queen's Gate car park. The realisation has come too late, though, and he's drawn level with Lewis before he can think to drop back again. They exchange nods, and Dan speeds up for the final minute, enjoying the visceral thrill of his own speed, leaving Lewis behind.

He stops at the bench and Lewis catches up a minute or two later, eyeing Dan's hamstring stretch with what looks like speculative interest for a moment before dropping to sit, breathing in short gasps.

"You're not gonna - stretch?" Dan asks, through his own heavy breathing, surprised into making the first move.

Lewis shrugs.

"You - might injure something."

"Be fine," is the muttered response, and Dan mentally shrugs and concentrates on balancing on one foot. He runs through his whole warmdown before Lewis speaks again. "So where are you going for uni?"

Dan's eyes fly to his face, startled, but there's no mockery. All he can find are wide blue eyes and awkward sincerity. "Oh. Uh. Cambridge?" Lewis makes a polite noise of interest. "To do English," Dan adds.

"Cool." Lewis fiddles with a gold signet ring he's wearing. "Was it difficult to get in?"

Dan kind of hates this question, even from people who he knows for a fact are academic enough to go to Oxbridge. From Lewis, combined with everything else, he shrugs and scratches his nose and generally looks anywhere except Lewis as he says, "Not really."

"You must be really clever."

Again, an uncomfortable shrug. "I'm just, I work hard." And then something makes him add, "Also, I went to private school - to Wickham Boys'? So I suppose that helps?"

"Yeah, I suppose," and there's the faintest echo of something bitter in Lewis' tone which pokes at Dan's shallowly-buried defensive response. He bites his tongue. After a second, Lewis glances up at him. "Sorry. I sort of wanted to go there."

"To Wickham?"

"Yeah, well, most schools in this catchment are shitholes, and Wickham's got some decent bursaries." He shrugs then, and looks away. "Not decent enough."

"What do your parents do?" Dan asks, and then winces, because that's probably as likely to cause awkwardness as the question about university. In fact, he can see Lewis' shoulders tensing, shoulderblades bunching together under his T-shirt.

"Nothing." And Dan can't - how does he respond? So he says, "Oh," and then Lewis snaps, "Don't really know who my dad is, mum's on the dole, mum's boyfriend robs TVs. Genuine underclass, alright? Not just lower-middle or whatever you were hoping so we could still shag."

Dan almost shifts backwards from the stare Lewis is aiming at him: not even angry, not a glare, just open and challenging. "Are you gay?" is what he says, instead of anything sensible like... actually, he's completely unequipped to deal with this conversation.

"Yes," Lewis says, "wasn't that the reason you started talking to me?"

"Well I didn't _know_ ," Dan protests, still on the back foot. "I just thought you looked..." He trails off, and then rallies. "Yeah, I thought you were pretty fit and I was hoping to pull."

"Didn't know lots of things." Lewis grins, lips pulling back from his teeth. "Your friends should get better security at their parties, keep the nice kids safe."

"No, I didn't, it's not, that's unfair!"

Lewis raises his eyebrows. "Right, still want to pull then, right? Let's go back to my mum's flat - my bed folds away during the day, so we might have to use the sofa, and the walls are pretty thin. And I think we have cockroaches because the fuckers up above are filth wizards, so."

"Hang on a sec," Dan says, and he feels like there's more to deal with in Lewis' speech than he's focusing on, but still: "Filth wizards? Black Books?"

There's a very slight pause, and then the teeth-baring that was masquerading as a smile on Lewis' face shifts a little bit and he has a dimple on his right cheek. Dan suddenly, helplessly, wants to press his thumb against it, right next to the soft curve of Lewis' mouth. "Yeah."

Somehow, bizarrely, they're smiling at each other in the warm midday light.

"Want a ride home?" Dan says, after a second, and Lewis says, "Sure," before suddenly looking alarmed. "I wasn't being serious!"

"No, I know, you were being a massive fucking bitch," Dan says, and he's rather astonished when that ignites nothing - all of the anger seems to have drained from both of them with shocking abruptness - "it's okay, just a lift."

"Yeah, okay. 'Cause, you can't come in, my mum's boyfriend votes BNP and he's a dick."

"Right," Dan says, nodding sagely and not displaying any of his horror on his face. He's not very sure what's going on, but he's pretty sure, as he pushes himself away from the bench and heads for his mum's car, Lewis following, that its continuation depends on him managing to sound non-judgemental in response to anything Lewis says.

***

"So," Lewis says, breaking the oddly comfortable silence that they've made the short car journey in, "I think you should probably drop me here."

Dan looks around. "This where you live?"

"Not... no," Lewis says uncomfortably. "Where I live's a bit shit, and I... the BNP thing."

"Oh." Dan hasn't run up against much active racism in his life. Been followed around a few shops, sure, and people sometimes cross the street to avoid him after dark. His friends spend a lot of time telling him to grow an afro, which would apparently be hilarious. But the kind of thing Lewis is skirting around, not really. "You'd get in trouble?"

"Yeah, maybe. If one of his mates saw. I don't think anything'd really happen to you." He looks uncomfortable. "You're not from around here." Dan wants to protest that he really is, he's five minutes by bike away from here at most, but Lewis is still talking. Something in Dan's expression has made him close in on himself a little. "I'm not, like, it's not like _trouble_. Mum wouldn't stay with someone who hit me. He just gets stupidly pissed off, because he's a tiny-dicked _cunt_."

Dan can't help his flinch at a word which he never uses and rarely hears, spat with such vehemence. Lewis sees it, and his cheeks stain a little pink, but he doesn't apologise, and after a second Dan nods. "Sure, you're getting out here?"

"Sorry, I'm spilling my life story at you." Lewis bites his lip, hard, and goes for the handle of the door.

"Hang on," Dan says, and reaches across Lewis' legs to get at the glove compartment, rummaging for a biro. Lewis shrinks away, and Dan is equally careful not to let any part of them touch.

He finds the pen, but no paper. "I actually kind of want your number," he says, glancing at Lewis as he sits upright again. "Can you?" He offers the back of his hand.

"Oh. Really?" Lewis takes the pen and steadies Dan with careful fingertips under his wrist. Dan can feel his cheeks heating again, a low coiling in the pit of his belly at the feel of Lewis' fingers on the thin skin over his pulse and the scratch of the pen on the skin of his hand. Lewis is bent over a little, concentrating on writing clearly, and Dan focuses on one ear, still tinged slightly pink. He wants to bite the tip of it.

Lewis sits back finally, and hands the pen back. Dan glances at the number - right number of digits at least, no other way to test it. "You don't have to call," Lewis says.

Dan nods, and says, "I probably will, though."

***

Dan normally doesn't bother with much of that bollocks about when you should call or whatever, but he's busy enough with rowing that it does take three or four days before he takes the cordless phone into the garden and sits under the apple tree. The number rings through, and he bites his lip down on a premature smile as it's picked up, and Lewis says, "Darren, if that's you, you're a creep."

"Not," Dan says, and then forces himself into coherence. "Not Darren. What's he done to you?"

"Oh." Lewis sounds very startled. "Hey. It is Dan, right?"

"Yeah, sorry, Dan, hi!"

"Hi," Lewis says, and then, "Darren's being a dick, don't worry."

"Sure, okay." Given that he doesn't even know who Darren is, he can probably manage not to worry. "Is this a bad time?"

"It's actually pretty good." Lewis' voice is smoothing out a little, from the choppy surprise down to his normal tones.

"Cool, 'cause I kinda..." Darren picks up a rotten apple that's fallen to the lawn and lobs it into the neighbour's bushes. "I kinda wanted to clarify. Something."

"Sure," Lewis says.

"I... I mean, I don't know if you were ever interested, really, but just in case you were, I realised I never said." He's tangling the fingers of his inactive hand in the sleeve of his hoodie.

"Yeah?" Lewis sounds wary.

"I still do want to pull," Dan manages finally. "Like, not on a sofa and I don't want cockroaches involved, but. Yeah. Actually, also, I'd like to stipulate the non-involvement of any BNP voters, as well."

Lewis laughs, a choked and taken aback sound. "That is not where I thought you were going."

"Really?" Dan rewinds. "Oh, you thought I was going for the brush-off?"

"Cockroaches and the BNP are not particularly attractive, 'specially for..." Lewis trails off.

"For?" Dan prompts, but he kind of knows what Lewis means.

"People like... people with money."

" _I_ don't have money," he protests, and he doesn't even have to hear Lewis' angry snort to know that that was the wrong tack to take. "Anyway, whatever," he says, riding over the beginning of what Lewis is saying, because if it's going to be vitriolic they should have this argument face-to-face, "do you want to come over?"

A pause, and when Lewis speaks again he sounds like Dan's clever diversion has taken the wind out of his sails. "Now? Why?"

"For..." Dan frowns, and throws another apple. "Are we not on the same page now?"

"No, okay, I'm there, I'm there. On the page, I mean. Where do you live?"

"You don't have work or anything?"

"No, they cut my shifts. Where do you live?"

"Oh, uh. Come to the train station, I'll pick you up. Where are you now?" He nods at Lewis' response. "Only two stops down."

"Okay," Lewis says, suddenly a little stilted. "It might take me a while."

It's only after Dan's hung up the phone that he realises that train tickets cost actual, tangible money, and he's not sure what Lewis can afford, but maybe he can't even afford that? He tries to ring back, but the phone has been switched off.

***

It's an hour later that he gets a text, and he's pretty sure Lewis must have walked from the high street to the train station. _im here_.

 _there in a sec_ , he texts back, and he's out of the door and on his bike in five minutes. The train station's only down a couple of roads, and it's sooner than he's really comfortable with that he's looking at Lewis, leaning against a tree by the station with a fag dangling out of his mouth, his body a long line from shoulders to hips.

"Hey," he says, "how was the train?" Because he doesn't want to just ask 'So you can't afford it, right?' Still, he's not sure that the question he's chosen is much better, given how fucking _weird_ it is.

Lewis hears the unspoken question, anyway, with that creepy antenna he seems to have for anything relating to money. Dan is greeted with a flat, "Fine. I walked. But you already knew that, right?"

"Public transport is stupidly expensive, isn't it?" Dan says, in what was intended to be commiserating but not judging or too inane, or whatever it is that sets Lewis off.

He misses the mark, somehow. "Uh huh, really? _You_ think public transport is expensive?"

"Oh for fuck's sake, yes, I pay the same amount of money as you to ride on the trains! There's not, like, a posh people's subsidy or anything."

"Right. But your fare isn't coming from a minimum-wage job where they've just cut your hours to part-time, is it? In fact, where's it coming from? Hmmmm, let's see." Lewis drags on the cigarette with a vicious pull, hollowing his cheeks. "Oh, right. Mummy and Daddy."

Dan spreads the hand not holding the bike up helplessly. "Look," he begins, and then is sidetracked for a second with, "I don't even call them Mummy and Daddy, you arse." He shakes his head, brings himself back to centre. "I'm-" He's not really _sorry_ for God's sake, because yet again this is _not_ his issue that Lewis has a chip the size of a mountain on his shoulder. "Shall we go?" he says instead.

"Fuck, this was probably a mistake," Lewis says, but he's stamping out his cigarette and pushing away from the tree.

"Probably," Dan agrees, but he glances at the fluidity of Lewis' movements, takes in the leanness of his thighs, and checks out his crotch, and can't quite bring himself to regret the invitation. If neither of them talks, it will probably be quite fun.

***

They've only been through the door for a second, Dan's bike stowed in the corner of the garden and the polished floorboards of the hall shining accusingly at him, reminding him of how this house must look to Lewis, which he doesn't care about, not really, when Lewis steps in and kisses Dan, hard. It's nothing like the odd thrill of Lewis writing on his hand, the dry gentleness of his fingertips. Lewis is angry, and Dan can feel it in his tongue and teeth and lips, shivering through his body. He bites Dan's lip, and Dan jerks into him a little, involuntarily. He's taller and broader than Lewis, who turns out now Dan has his hands on him to be sliced down to bone and muscle, but Dan can't summon the same force Lewis has right now. He just takes it, falling back a step or two with almost a stumble when Lewis pushes. Lewis' hands are running restlessly over his back, and Dan tries to keep his own hands steady on Lewis' hips, tries to pull the kiss down to something more manageable, something less furious.

Lewis pulls away, his lips bruised red, and Dan can't look away from them when Lewis starts speaking, shaping his mouth around the words, "You said no sofas?"

That makes Dan focus back onto his face. "Uh." He doesn't really want to invite Lewis into his bedroom. Their arms have fallen back to their sides, and only the harsh sounds of their breathing and the darkness of Lewis' lips gives the lie to the distance between their bodies.

"Sure," Lewis says, eyes wide and hungry but face falling a little.

"Hey, no." Dan is a little surprised at how much he doesn't like the tucked-down corners of Lewis' mouth. "It was more a... no sofas with cockroaches stipulation. We can, uh, definitely sit down."

The sitting room's upstairs, and Dan's starting to get an uncomfortable feeling, knows his shoulders are rising to his ears. It's a big house, okay? There are three sofas in the sitting room, and that's only half the space. Lewis hasn't even said anything, and Dan is already fidgeting uncomfortably in front of the large bay windows, not meeting his eyes. Lewis finally says, filling the expectant silence, "Nice house."

"Uh. Thanks. My parents', obviously."

"Obviously." The space between them is vast again, and Dan can't quite figure out how they are supposed to cross it, how to go back to the kissing in the hall now that they are standing in the expanse of the living room, next to the art on the walls and the grandfather clock and the flatscreen TV.

Lewis seems to have some idea, though. He takes a step or two forward, and slides a long finger through one of Dan's beltloops, thumb resting on skin above his waistband and under his T-shirt and raising goosebumps on Dan's belly. "So I've decided," he says conversationally, "that I'm going to stop getting chippy for about the next half hour, in the interests of using one of these sofas. And then after that we can go back to how ridiculous your life is."

"Oh." Dan sort of wants to protest that the problem is not really the ridiculousness of his life, but the ridiculousness of blaming him for it, but Lewis has leaned in and twisted his head up to bite at the soft skin under Dan's chin, which feels wet and a little painful and hot as fuck.

"What do you want to do?" he mutters into the angle of Dan's jaw, the vibration of his words making Dan's hands, which have risen to his back, clench in the shiny material of his T-shirt.

"Not all that picky," he manages, moving one hand down to ruck up the T-shirt and get his fingers on the delicate skin at the small of Lewis' back.

"Mmmmm." Lewis tips his head back, his eyes wide and dark again. "Let's sit down?"

They do, on the biggest sofa, a huge and comfortable red affair. Dan ends up tucked into the corner, Lewis sprawled between him and the back of the sofa, with one leg tucked over his thighs. The kissing is far more comfortable than it was in the hall, a wet and lazy exchange of tongues that makes Dan shiver and draws incoherent murmurs of appreciation from Lewis. They're both hard, Dan can feel the heat and solidity against his leg, but Dan's not entirely sure about actually coming on the sofa, and Lewis doesn’t seem determined.

At least, for the first ten or fifteen minutes, he doesn’t. But his murmurs get progressively higher, more like whines, and he has definitely started to push his hips against Dan's leg in an irregular rhythm when Dan breaks away for a few deep breaths, leaving his hand shaping the curve of Lewis' skull over the bristle of his hair. "Do you want to get off?" he mutters into the damp heat between their mouths, glancing at Lewis' half-lidded eyes from beneath his own eyelashes. "Because I don't know."

"Don't know whether I want to get off?" There's a thread of laughter under Lewis' rough voice, and he pushes his hard-on quite pointedly against Dan again.

"Well, I mean." Dan scratches his fingernails lightly over Lewis' scalp, enjoying the shiver it elicits. "You know what I mean."

"Can we?"

That gives Dan pause, because he's not... really sure. "Do you _want_ to?" he says again. The space between their faces feels a little colder now.

"You don't, do you?" Lewis says. He doesn't roll away, though, just shifts around until his hard-on is no longer pressing against Dan's leg.

That galvanises Dan into action. "No, I do," he says, and slides the hand that was resting on Lewis' hip around until it's resting on the solid weight of his erection. Lewis bites his lip and twitches, and the white flash of teeth set into the pink of his mouth fascinates Dan, helplessly drawing his eyes.

"Oh, okay," Lewis says weakly, and then twitches again when Dan doesn't move. "Not in my jeans, though, have you got?" He groans as Dan presses down a little, and then says, "Tissues," as his eyes drift shut.

"Hang on, get your jeans off and I'll find them." Dan rolls off the edge of the sofa with a thump, taking a half-second of sitting on the floor to clear the hot flood of hunger from his brain, blinking until he can think straight. Okay, tissues.

He ends up going to the bathroom for toilet paper, and when he comes back Lewis has kicked his jeans and boxers off, dick rising flushed and heavy from under the hem of his Arsenal T-shirt. "Oh," Dan says, and then drops the wad of toilet paper on the sofa as he fumbles with his own zipper, almost tumbling over as he half-hops his way out of his clothes. He ends up doing a mostly-controlled fall on top of Lewis, who lets out a quiet, pleased grunt, and wastes absolutely no time getting his spit-slick hand on Dan's dick.

Which feels really fucking good, and Dan rolls to the side, careful not to dislodge the slowly-stroking hand, so that he can make space to get at Lewis' cock in turn. They struggle, frustrated, for a second or two, not enough space for both of them to move freely, before Dan mutters, "Just, here, back off," and takes both of them in hand, pressing the slick heads together. The feeling makes him moan, low and rising from his toes, and Lewis stretches up to kiss him, muttering, "You're fucking noisy."

"Whatever," Dan responds, and twists his wrist, which makes Lewis whimper. He can see Lewis' peaked nipples through his shirt, and bends his head to suck hard, turning the whimper into a low, broken moan.

"Gonna be about - oh - five seconds," Lewis mutters, banding an arm across Dan's back to pull him closer. Dan resists, because any closer and he won't have the space to _move_ , concentrating on getting the material under his tongue as wet as possible and on keeping his rhythm, vision sparking from how good it feels. "Here," and Lewis shoves the discarded toilet paper into his face. "Don't - d-don't let me make a - uh - mess."

It's almost too late, Lewis' back is arching and his toes are curling, but Dan has time to get the tissue in place before he comes, voice spiralling high in a gasp and eyes slamming shut. Almost immediately after, voice languid but movements urgent, he's pushing at Dan's hand. "Stop, stop, hurts."

It kills Dan, who's still hard and sticky, to take his hand away, but the second he does Lewis' face loses its pinched look and he relaxes into Dan with a sigh, and something about that just makes Dan feel _great_. So he can be patient for a few seconds. He balls up the gross toilet paper and drops it over the side of the sofa, where, God willing, he will not forget about it, putting his other hand back on Lewis' almost non-existent hair and getting a lick to the side of his neck in gratitude.

He's only got the strength to be patient for a very little while, so thank God Lewis only seems to need to luxuriate for half a minute before pulling away. "Got any more tissue paper?" he asks.

"In the bathroom," Dan says, and starts contemplating the horror of getting up.

"Ah, fuck it, you don't need to walk home in your clothes," Lewis says, and drops a thin, strong hand to Dan's dick. It only takes a few strokes, and Dan whines high in the back of his throat as Lewis catches the come with the edge of his T-shirt. Dan will protest about this abuse of his property, he thinks muzzily, in about five seconds.

Lewis' face is buried in his neck, Dan finds when he blinks himself out of the state of slow, syrupy unawareness, his chest rising and falling gently against Dan's. Dan's hand is still in his hair. "Hey," he says softly, and gets a mumbled, "Hey," in response.

That's enough of a successful interaction for Dan to relax fully against the sofa cushions, and another minute passes before Lewis pushes himself upright, shaking out his shoulders and looking for his jeans and boxers. "Eurgh," he says a second later, picking up the ball of tissues with two delicate fingertips and shaking it in Dan's direction.

"Yeah, I'll..." Dan holds out a hand for it, and then scowls when Lewis actually drops it into his hand. He rolls himself to his feet, pulling on his boxers and making a face at his now stained T-shirt. "I'll be right back, I'll put it in the outside bin."

It only takes a few minutes, stopping in the kitchen for a glass of water and in his room to change the T-shirt, and he returns to the sitting room to find Lewis dressed, leaning against the bay window and peering out over the street beneath. Dan hesitates to break the silence, clearing his throat after a moment. "Hey," Lewis says.

"Do you have to go?" Dan asks, and that makes Lewis turn around, eyebrows raised a little before they drop and his mouth compresses.

"Uh, I. Sure," he says.

"Not if you don't want to," Dan says, spreading his bare toes into the carpet. His tone is weak in the face of Lewis’ unexpected agreement. "We could watch something. Or play Playstation."

Lewis shakes his head and says, "No, it's fine, whatever, I should go."

"If you have to," Dan says, feeling oddly deflated. Something seems to have gone wrong again. He accompanies Lewis downstairs, and tries to ignore the hollow feeling in his stomach when Lewis responds to his, “Hey, I’ll call you soon,” with an apparently uninterested shrug.

Dan shuts the front door behind the retreating Lewis with a the horrible certainty that Lewis doesn’t want to see him again. He wishes, as he heads upstairs to straighten the sofa cushions, that knowing that wasn’t quite so disappointing.

***

"Hey, it's that guy," Titan says, waving vaguely towards Dan's window. They're in the traffic jam that always piles up just past the turn to Prince's Meadow, and they haven't moved very much in the last ten minutes. "Let's see if he wants a lift."

And before Dan, who has only just identified the person Titan was gesturing at through the rain, can stop him, the window is down and Titan is shouting, with the lung capacity of a rower, "HEY, LEWIS."

Lewis squints at them through the grey haze of drizzle, hands in his pockets and elbows hunched into himself. He looks miserable and cold, and the misery deepens a little when he visibly catches sight of Dan. Dan feels like someone's jabbed him in the gut, for a second. What did he do? Lewis comes over, though, bending down to peer through the window. "Hey," he says, voice flat and colourless.

"Hey!" Titan says, a study in contrast. "It's shitty weather, man, do you want a lift? I don't know if you remember me, Titan, right? But you know Dan."

"Yeah," Lewis says, after a pause that Dan's pretty sure Titan didn't catch. His cheeks heat, and he's thankful as always that it isn't visible.

"Great, hop in, just chuck the stuff off the back seat. Where are you headed?"

Lewis' eyes widen infinitesimally, and Dan grimaces - he's pretty sure Lewis wasn't agreeing to the lift - but Lewis gets in anyway, after another second of pause, shuffling Titan's rowing gear to the seat behind the driver. "Uh, I'm going to near Thornbury Crescent," he says.

"Oh, cool, our boathouse is down there, you know that little path that goes down behind the primary school?"

"Yes," Lewis says, uncertainly. Dan says nothing.

"Goes down to Wickham Boathouse." Titan looks over his shoulder to grin at Lewis, and then faces front again as the lights change and the jam begins to move. "Actually," Titan continues, eyes on the road, and Dan starts to get a low-level feeling of horror, because he knows where Titan is going with this, "we're going to have a barbecue this evening, you should come and join us!"

"Really," says Lewis, and Dan feels like he's the only one who can hear the incredulity shading his tone. Titan definitely can't hear it, or at least is pretending not to, which Dan would not put past him.

"Yeah, definitely, the weather's supposed to clear up by this evening and we've got a big race in a couple of weeks so we're having our last, like, hang-out time. And lots of non-boaties are coming, anyone's welcome, right, Dan?"

He's looking over at Dan, and Dan can feel Lewis' eyes boring into the back of his neck, and all he can say is an unenthusiastic, "Yeah, sure." Yeah, sure, come and spend time around me, Lewis, I’m sure that’s what you want to do.

There's a few seconds of awkward silence, and then Lewis says, an edge of spite to his flat voice, "I'd love to." The weight of his eyes leaves Dan's spine.

***

Lewis looks out of place. He doesn't stand in the same way as the multitude of Wickham and Lady Henrietta's sixth-formers gathered around the boathouse, clinking bottles and facing the world with chins high and chests puffed. He doesn't talk in the same way, and Dan keeps getting caught by the echo of a glottal stop drifting across the lawn. He isn't dressed in the same way, his jeans and a T-shirt different from all of the other jeans and all of the other T-shirts in a way that Dan is keenly aware of other people noticing, or perhaps just keenly aware of.

Dan hasn't spoken to him since he arrived.

The Lady Henrietta's girl he's talking to, Min, is telling him about her summer plans, and he realises with a start that he's missed the beginning of the explanation. "Min, sorry," he says, "rewind, where are you going?"

"I knew you weren't listening." Min pokes him in the chest. They were together in the Wickham and LH A-Level Drama class, and she's known him for a long time. "Greece, moron."

"Right, got you, house on the beach, ruins, you'll arrive at Oxford dripping with atmosphere and knowledge and also a good tan."

Min nods. "And then the entirety of the first year will be a doss."

"Because of your two-week holiday in Greece?"

Min laughs a little. "I'll be fully in touch with my classical roots." There's a slight pause, while she watches him with shrewd eyes, and then she says, "Titan said that guy was a friend of yours."

"Which guy?" It's clumsy, Dan knows it's clumsy. Min doesn't dignify it with an answer.

"Actually, he said 'friend'," and the hand not holding her drink gestures sarcastically in the air, "and then winked at me and asked if I wanted to be his friend."

Dan snorts softly. "And what did you say?"

"Kicked him in the shin." Her shoes are quite pointy, Dan winces in sympathy. "And Titan's awfulness is not an effective subject change, Daniel Vassa. Why are you leaving the poor guy to the sharks?"

Dan shifts a little. "I'm not," he says, but not with much strength to his voice. Last he was aware of, and he's been very aware of Lewis, Lewis was talking to Si and Maddie, who have probably found at least one of Lewis' apparent multitudes of sore spots and then danced on it with tap shoes, while talking loudly about how devastated they are to have only gotten As and whether they should take out student loans or let their parents pay for their uni fees.

Probably. Dan's extrapolating, admittedly. He kind of hopes they have, a little, so that Lewis can see that Dan is actually a model of tact.

Min pokes him again. "I will pay you a fiver if Si and Maddie haven't managed to make him feel at least a little shit."

"No bet," Dan says, and then, plaintively, "Titan invited him, why do I have to look after him?"

Maddie holds out a hand. "Come on, little one, we will look after him together." She's towing him across the lawn before he can object.

Lewis notices them from quite far away, Dan can tell by the way his stance shifts, but Si and Maddie don't until Min taps Maddie on the shoulder, at which point she swings around with an enthusiastic, "Hey!" and hugs her. Si and Dan exchange a nod and a shoulderpunch, and then Dan ruffles Maddie's hair and Min kisses Si on the cheek. Lewis watches it all with an expressionless face, until Dan looks at him and tries a smile.

It doesn't really get returned, but Lewis sort of grimaces in a not-actively-unfriendly way. "This is Min," Dan tells him, pressing ahead. "Min, this is Lewis."

"Hey." Lewis reaches out to shake her hand.

"We were just chatting about summer holidays," Maddie says, "you're going to Greece, right, Min?" Min nods, and Maddie turns to Lewis. "And you, Lewis?"

Dan half-suppresses a wince, and is surprised to find that yet again he is the one being glared at in this scenario, not Maddie. "Not going anywhere," Lewis says, after half a second of fierce eyes on Dan. "But Greece sounds nice."

"We're going to Scotland," Si puts in, "to stay on my mum's friend's estate. Isn't that ridiculous? They bought a _Scottish hunting estate_."

Dan sort of loses track of the conversation after that, too observed in cataloguing the expressions on Lewis' face. Eventually, under cover of a bit of teasing between Si and Min, he drifts a little closer and mutters, "I probably should have come and said hello before."

"Whatever, don't put yourself out." There's something small and sad about Lewis' tone that makes Dan feel awful.

"No, I just... I don't know."

"Didn't want me to be here? Embarrassed? I can tell, trust me."

That was probably true a second ago, but now that Lewis has said it becomes suddenly extremely important that it is _not_ true. "No! Just being an idiot, I'm sorry!"

"Whatever," Lewis says again, shrugging the apology away. "You're a cunt." His voice is low and clear and calm, and Dan starts at the epithet, glancing around almost guiltily. No one's noticed it being dropped.

"I-" Dan breathes for a second. "I think that's a bit harsh."

"Really." Lewis' eyes won't settle on his face, they're darting from the corner of his mouth to the top of his ear to the middle of his forehead to the edge of his shoulder, and his mouth is set in a fiercely neutral flat line. Dan doesn't quite understand how this got so bad so fast, and he touches Lewis' forearm, curled protectively across his chest.

"Hey. I - what's up?" He knows he sounds useless, a little forlorn.

Lewis stiffens, and his eyes finally fix on Dan's, narrowed and so furious that Dan has to look away. "Oh, nothing much. Had sex with some guy, got kicked out of his house straight after, decided to come to a party he didn't want me at because I wanted to piss him off. Standard."

Dan's lips part. That - was that what happened? He's pretty sure it isn't.

He's taken too long to respond, and with an almost inaudible, " _Fuck_ you, you fucking cunt," Lewis has pulled away and headed in the direction of the exit, storming through the crowds of sixth-formers with his head down.

It takes Dan a second to pull himself together enough to follow, catching Min's eyes and spreading his hands helplessly. He dodges through guests, following Lewis' wake, and sees him behind the hedge that surrounds the boathouse lawn, stopped at the gate that leads to the path away from the river by a genial and wildly gesturing Titan. Thank Christ for Titan.

"Hey," Titan waves as he gets closer, "hey, Dan, come and talk to Lewis." If Dan didn't know Titan, he would have missed the shrewd edge to his tone, overlaid by hail-fellow-well-met congeniality and the hearty boisterousness of a confident public schoolboy.

Lewis straightens up like he's been prodded in the kidneys, shoulders rising to his ears, and doesn't turn around. "I'll leave you guys, right?" Titan says, and he winks at Dan with horrifying obviousness. "Weenie Jackson was looking particularly charming earlier." And he's gone before Dan can do more than grasp futilely at his wrist, disappearing in a whirl of polo shirt and bright white teeth.

"Uh," Dan says. Lewis doesn't turn around, so Dan has to walk around him to see his face, ducked away and staring at the ground. "I really, really think we should probably try to have at least one complete conversation." Silence from Lewis, and he's not meeting Dan's eyes. Dan swallows, and presses on. "'Cause, like, I didn't really recognise what you said as what actually happened?" He doesn't mean it to be a question. "I asked if you wanted to play Playstation or something, I wasn't kicking you out."

Complete, blank silence. Lewis shifts backwards on his feet, runs a hand over his head, and then says, "Right. Now I feel like a fucking idiot."

That's not really an improvement on before, to be honest, the fury turned inwards in Lewis' tone making Dan wince. "I can - I can sort of see where you got it from?" That's a lie, he can't, and wishes Lewis were less _complicated_ , more like everyone else Dan has ever had social interactions with, because this feels like skipping over a field full of rabbit holes.

"You - I was just." Lewis drops his folded arms and looks at Dan finally. "Your _house_ , and _you_. You're going to Cambridge, for fuck's sake. I was just," he finishes again, trailing off, and then says with a slight renewal of strength, "I was waiting since before I got in the door."

Dan still doesn't really understand, and his, "Uh, what?" makes Lewis almost predictably angry.

"Fuck's sake, waiting for you to say it was a joke or for your mates to jump out from behind the curtains and spray me with paint or, fuck, something. I'm not a soft touch, alright, I know it was a set-up somehow and I don't want to stick around to find out how!" The outburst is spiky and thin and a little desperate, and when Lewis has finished, he falls silent, chest heaving with furious breaths.

"You don't really..." Dan's sure of this, and he takes a step closer. "I mean maybe you do right now, but that's not what you were thinking the whole time." He touches Lewis' forearm again, running his hand down to catch Lewis' limp and unresisting one.

"How the fuck would you know?" But now Lewis' voice is tired, and it takes a tug on his hand to get him leaning into Dan a little, haphazard pockets of heat at shoulder and chest and thigh.

Dan tucks his other arm around Lewis' shoulders and says, "I don't really, I don't really know you."

"No," Lewis agrees, muffled by Dan's T-shirt.

"I think. Like, maybe we should sort that out?"

They're there for a minute or two, breathing together and not touching any more than they already are, before Lewis says, "This is a waste of time, though, innit?"

He doesn't pull away, or lift his face away from Dan's shoulder. "No?" Dan says uncertainly.

"When do you leave for uni?"

"Oh, uh, end of September."

"Right." And now Lewis does move away. "So we can save ourselves any more stupid scenes and just drop this... whatever."

"I don't-" Dan rubs his forehead. "I don't want to."

The proper reaction, the reaction he was sort of secretly expecting, would have been a softening of Lewis' face, perhaps a step forward into Dan's body, probably a snog. What he gets instead is a barked, "Are you having a laugh?"

" _No_ , for fuck's sake, it's like dealing with..." He can't think of anything that is not too egregiously offensive, so settles for, "Can you just assume that I'm not a horrible person? Occasionally?"

"Seeing as I met you less than a month ago," Lewis says, eyes hard and watchful, "not really."

That gives Dan pause; he can't quite comprehend that level of mistrust levelled at the world around. "I'm honestly not, a lot of the time, and I'd like to try-"

"Roughing it?" Lewis interrupts, and then without a pause, "What do you even know about me to know that you want to get to know me?"

"I-" Dan rubs his forehead again, pinching at the bridge of his nose. "Okay. Um. You're prickly as fuck, you're fit, you're really sharp - like, too sharp, definitely, but still - and quick off the mark, you know what pesto is," that makes Lewis' mouth twist very slightly in amusement, "which is apparently more important to me than I thought, you're," he shrugs, "you're just interesting."

"Yeah, well." Lewis' mouth twists around the shape of something unpleasant, but he seems to bite it back, and says, "Fine. You passed the test, good for you, you get the crappy prize."

"I... okay. I do?"

"Yeah, me," Lewis says, and Dan is shocked out of breathing for a moment by the openness of it, before Lewis says, "Shit, not _me_ , that's not how I meant it," and Dan comes back into himself to hear, "Just, you know, we can try to talk a bit or whatever."

"Coming back, then?" Dan gestures beyond the hedge, to where voices are rising and falling in the slow twilight.

Lewis shakes his head. "No. Not... really not my kind of party. I'm gonna walk home, 's a nice evening."

It only takes a second before Dan says, "I'll come, let me go and get my jacket from the clubhouse."

"Oh. Okay."

"Just - wait right there!" Dan says, gesturing a 'stay' motion and backing away. "Please don't disappear." He turns the corner of the hedge and leaves Lewis in the gathering gloam, face pale in the dusk light.

He's close to where Dan left him when Dan gets back, lighting a cigarette with his back to Dan, and he turns round with his eyebrows raised when he hears Dan's footsteps. "Ready?"

"Yeah, sure," Dan says. "Where do you live?"

"Somewhere you can't walk to," Lewis says, and before Dan can feel hurt by the curtness, he adds, "but I was thinking we could walk along the river a bit? Maybe?" He exhales a mouthful of smoke, turning his head away from Dan.

"Yes, that would be great," Dan says, and he knows he means it, and he catches an oddly shy glance from Lewis that lets him know that Lewis knows he means it too.

They take a left after the boatyard gate, onto the riverside path. It's quiet and monochromatic, that stage of the evening when only the very faintest of colours are still discernible as the dark closes quickly. Lewis' cigarette glows orange in the dimness, and the river rushes endlessly past to their right.

"Sorry the barbecue wasn't that great," Dan says finally, after what seems like forever of silence. "I should’ve not been such a dick, that might have helped."

"'S alright," Lewis says around his cigarette. "I do get that I'm not the right sort, honestly."

"I. That's not it," Dan says, but he really means _that can't be it, I didn't think the world still worked like that_. He can see Lewis' head turn beside him, feel the assessing gaze resting on him before Lewis turns to face front again.

"Yeah it is, you just don't think it is." He laughs softly, holding his fag between two sure fingers.

"I didn't think..." Dan says, and then, sick of always being on the back foot, he firms his voice and says, "But, look, there's not much of that anymore, is there, really?" He knows the 'really' sounds like his father, bluff and a little patronising.

"Not much of what?" Lewis says, looking out over the river towards the other bank.

"Of - whatever. Working class discrimination, or whatever."

Lewis snorts, but there's none of the normal flashing anger. "I thought you might," is all he says, and Dan can only wait a few second before he says impatiently, "Thought I might what?"

Lewis takes a drag on his cigarette. "I could get poetic and shit, be like," he pauses, eyes narrowed in thought, "you never see the bars of a cage that you're sitting on top of?" he finally suggests, and then laughs softly. "Shitty metaphor."

This is not the kind of conversation Dan is used to having with this boy, soft and thoughtful and calm, and the pleasure of it tinges his voice when he says, more open than he would otherwise have been to the new thoughts Lewis is introducing, "No, I kind of get you."

"Mmmmm," Lewis says. "Whatever, 's not going to affect your life."

It kind of already is affecting his life, though, is the thing, in the way that he can't figure out how Lewis works, how to talk to him without being offensive. Not that he says any of that, because he knows it will be greeted with derision and will probably deserve it. "What do you want to do with your life?" he says eventually, not sure if he's being too tactless but willing to risk it in this space of grey faces and quiet voices.

Lewis flicks his cigarette down the embankment and into the river, and doesn't respond with the snap that Dan thought he might. "Dunno," he says. "I, like, I try to think every so often. But a job is a job, right, and I can't really get picky."

Dan abruptly realises the gulf between them, the fact that he is talking to an adult, a man, and Lewis is talking to someone still caught with one toe in childhood, someone looking towards another three years where no one will quite let him fall, or stand, by himself. "I want to be a director," he says, and for once it comes out like he means it, like an offered confidence rather than an unconscious taunt.

"Really?" It's soft, interested. "How do you get into that?"

"I'm..." Dan laughs a little. "I'm not really sure. There's not really a direct career path. I'm going to try and do some stuff while I'm at Cambridge, though, and see what happens after." The privilege of being able to be so vague is, for the first time, not lost on him.

"Cool," Lewis says, a quiet acknowledgement. "Best of luck, or whatever."

"Cheers."

There's a little silence for a while, before Lewis says, very low, "Wanted to be a doctor, for a bit. When I was small. Ages ago."

Dan takes a breath _you still could - do you know about the loans - I bet there's scholarships - my parents have a friend - you can volunteer with -_ and releases it again, a still small voice inside telling him with a shock of empathy _not now, maybe not ever_. Instead he makes an encouraging noise, and listens as a little of Lewis finally spills out.

"No particular reason. Just, I liked science, when I was little, and one of the teachers gave us a careers talk about what we could do with science. And I just thought... I thought Dr Harrison sounded pretty good, pretty solid. Someone you'd pay attention to."

"Yeah," Dan agrees.

"But I didn't stick at school after GCSEs, and my GCSEs aren't great. I'm not dumb," his voice even, defensiveness leeched out by the calm of the night, "just... I didn't do that great, and it always seemed a bit of a waste of time. School, I mean. And now I'm sort of starting to see the point, there's no way back in."

Dan restrains himself from starting to make plans, from explaining how there _is_ a way back in and how maybe bad GCSEs aren't the end of the world, and anything's achievable if you try. Lewis seems to hear the whole unspooling speech anyway, and responds to what Dan hasn't said with, "Not from down here. Highest I'm aiming is not living with my mum forever."

It's choking Dan a little, what he can't say. _I'll take care of it. Come and live in my house. No one should be so matter-of-fact about cockroaches and impermanent beds._ Instead, he tries a soft, "Good luck," and is rewarded with a nod from Lewis, and a brush of his thumb across the back of Dan's hand.

They mutually drifted to a halt a few mumbled words ago, and now they look at each other for a moment before Lewis steps off the path into the mulch, walking a few paces until he is leaning against the trunk of a huge oak. His thumbs are hooked in his jeans pockets, his hips cocked forwards, and his smile is open and sweet and the softest Dan has seen on his face. Dan stumbles a little in his haste to plant his feet between Lewis', resting one hand on his hip and leaning into him. He steadies himself with the other hand on the bark by Lewis' head, finishing up an inch from Lewis' mouth. "I'm sorry I was shit before," he says, watching Lewis' eyes close and his chin tilt back as the warm air of Dan's speaking brushes across his mouth. "You should come by and play Playstation, genuinely."

"Can think of better things to do," Lewis says, voice rasping through an apparently dry throat. His Adam's apple bobs.

"Yeah, so can I," Dan says, smiling a little. Lewis' face tips up further, helplessly. Dan leans in, closes the gap, leaves a light, brief, barely-there kiss on the very corner of Lewis' bottom lip and gets a tiny whine in response, caught at the back of Lewis' throat. Dan drops another one on his eyelid, the tip of his nose, leans a little to get at the soft skin in front of his ear. Lewis' breath is coming faster, the corners of his eyes crinkled tight and his hands, still in his jeans pockets, working restlessly. Dan can feel the convulsive furling and unfurling of his fingers against his own hips, a little uncomfortable where bone presses against bone.

He's pretty sure he won't get away with this for much longer, and he's right: after another kiss to the hinge of Lewis' jaw, Lewis says in a tight murmur, "Countdown 'till I take the fuck over is beginning now, just so you know."

"Thanks for the update," Dan says, and kisses him properly, feeling the sigh of relief from Lewis down to his toes. His hands come out of his pockets, finding their way around to the small of Dan's back and yanking hard, pulling him in with a shocking suddenness that drives the breath out of Dan's mouth and into Lewis'.

They're there in the lee of the oak for a minute or two, Lewis' hands working their way to Dan's skin, palming his shoulderblades, one of Dan's hands cupping Lewis' face, thumb pressing into the soft skin under his jaw. By the time they pull apart they are both breathing frantically, and Dan can hear a catch every time he inhales.

"Not really up for indecent exposure," Lewis says softly, hands smoothing almost apologetically down Dan's spine. They're both hard.

"No, me neither," Dan agrees, with a tug of regret. “What time is it?”

Lewis retrieves a hand from under Dan’s clothes to peer at his watch. “Just gone ten, I should be getting back.”

“Sure, okay,” Dan agrees, stepping back a little and feeling the chill of the night air touching the exposed skin at his waist as Lewis’ other hand drops away with a lingering stroke. Dan tugs his shirt down sharply. “I – we’re on a better... level or whatever, now, right?”

Lewis shrugs, eyes on the leaves at his feet. “I mean, sure. I’m not really clear on why you’re keen on this thing, but I suppose there’s a couple of months to go. You’ve got my number, anyway.”

“You free tomorrow?” Lewis nods, eyes a little wary. “Playstation? Actual Playstation, my mum’ll be around. I can pick you up if you want, she’ll let me use the car.”

“Yeah, that sounds okay. I’ve got a shift at 6.30, sometime after lunch or whatever.”

***

In the cold light of day, Lewis taking a tentative step inside the hall and very aware of his mother bearing down on them from the sitting room with her hostess smile, Dan has to wonder whether this new and fragile thing can possibly stand up anywhere except the riverbank, any time except the dusk. Then his mother reaches them, and holds out her hand and says, “Hello, I’m Melissa,” and Lewis, after a quick glance at Dan from under his lashes, takes it and says, “Lewis, it’s nice to meet you.” Dan notes the careful pronunciation with a sadness he can’t really explain.

“And you,” his mum agrees, “I haven’t heard much about you.” She glances at Dan. “Teenage boys are terrible at sharing with their mothers, I’m sure you’re the same.”

Dan laughs awkwardly, shuffling his feet, and hears an echo of the laugh from Lewis – looks at him to see that he is also shuffling his feet. “I’m not sure there’s much to share, uh, Mrs...” He shoots Dan an agonised look, and Dan’s mum says, “Vassa, but it’s Melissa, please. I’m sure there’s lots to share, are you in any of Dan’s classes?”

Dan can feel his mind sort of go blank with horror, because he can’t understand how he didn’t anticipate this, and most of him is occupied with hoping that Lewis doesn’t take this opportunity to storm away. The rest of him is busily avoiding looking at Lewis’ face, because he doesn’t want to see the blankness there, the sign of something hurting. But then he hears a surprisingly unruffled, “No, I actually went to Northfront Community, down the road,” and is it seriously only Dan who is so horrifyingly tactless that he can provoke Lewis to hissing and spitting and raising his hackles?

“Oh, of course,” his mum says, with the slight flatness of surprise, but she rallies with, “I know exactly where you mean,” almost regaining her edge of enthusiasm. Lewis still doesn’t blink.

“Mum,” Dan intercedes, “Lewis’s not got much time, we’re going to go upstairs.”

“Lovely, I’m just going to make some tea. Do you want anything, Lewis?”

Lewis shakes his head, and Dan, guided by a hosting impulse he didn’t even know he had, tries, “Water, maybe?”

“I’m fine,” Lewis says. “Thank you.”

“Okay, bye, Mum!”

Dan takes the stairs two at a time, hearing Lewis on his heels, and when they’re inside his room turns around and says, “Sorry. Should have warned you. Or her.”

“Warned her of what exactly was coming to visit?” Lewis asks, and there’s the anger again, held tight to his chest. He leans back against Dan’s door, over his parental advisory poster.

Dan breathes in once, twice, and then says, “No, I chose the wrong word. I’m sorry.” It’s not as hard to say as it would have been a few days ago. The chip on Lewis’ shoulder is feeling more and more like his problem.

“Oh.” Lewis’ face softens a little. “Okay. Shall we...?” He gestures at the TV in the corner of the room.

“Yeah, do you wanna – I know I said Playstation, but there’s TV or DVDs as well, like.” He shifts a little on the balls of his feet, and then says, “I’ve got Black Books. If you haven’t seen it for a while.” He has it _now_ at least; it’s the one thing he knows for sure that they have in common.

“I haven’t seen it since it aired, we don’t have a – yeah, anyway, that’d be cool.”

There’s a sofa facing the TV in Dan’s room and they end up, after Dan has switched off the lights and drawn the curtains, settled at opposite ends. Lewis is curled tightly into his corner and Dan is a little more sprawled, comfortable in his own room.

It’s not until, onscreen, Fran is pouring salt into wine and tugging down her shirt that Dan glances over at Lewis and feels the jolt of connection as their eyes meet. Lewis has scrunched up his legs and is resting his chin on top of them, gazing at Dan, but he only holds it for a second after Dan looks at him before snapping back to the screen. “Hey,” Dan says, and Lewis mumbles, “What?” with a snappish bite to it. “Hey,” Dan says again. “If you want, you could...” He gestures vaguely, in a way that he’s perfectly aware could mean anything.

Lewis seems to get it, though. He looks at Dan again, to the accompaniment of Fran’s evening going up in the flames, and shrugs awkwardly. “I – okay.” Dan shifts, to make a little more room between him and the sofa, and Lewis slides into it, stiff and skinny, managing to elbow Dan in the gut with enough force to be painful, muttering, “Sorry, sorry.”

“Here,” Dan says, and worms an arm around him, stretching his legs down the length of the sofa. “Here, stick your head on my shoulder, and you can put your legs that way too.”

“We’ve missed loads of it,” Lewis mutters into Dan’s shirt with an irritated huff.

“Hang on.” Dan retrieves the remote, and flips back to the beginning of the episode. “Look, magic.”

“Fuck off.” But he twists so that he can see the screen, and one foot slides over Dan’s calf.

It takes Dan about half of the episode to gradually slide his fingers into Lewis’ hair, rubbing along the nape of his neck and up into the bristles. Lewis is warm all along his side, relaxing so slowly that it’s barely noticeable, and the weight of his head on Dan’s sternum is both uncomfortable and welcome, keeping his breathing strong and steady. One hand is resting on Dan’s stomach, rising with each inhale, the very edge of his little finger brushing against a patch of exposed skin.

It’s much later, after two or three Black Books episodes, when Lewis murmurs into Dan’s neck. “What?” Dan asks. “I didn’t hear.”

“Said ‘s probably not a set-up,” Lewis says louder, not looking up at Dan. “Or at least, it’s not going to be worth the pay-off for you.”

Dan runs his hand over Lewis’ scalp, tracing around the back of his ear, and says, “I’m really not very devious.”

“Mmmmm.”

An episode later, Dan realises that Lewis is asleep.

***

Lewis rings a couple of days after the Black Books watching, which has Dan already grinning as he lifts the phone to his ear. “Hey,” he says, and he’s sure his delight comes through in his tone.

“Hey,” says Lewis softly. “How are you?”

“Fine, you?”

“Not bad.” There’s a pause. Dan waits patiently. “So,” Lewis finally says. “I had, like... the other day was. The other day was nice.”

“Yeah,” Dan agrees.

“I was just... I was thinking of heading out for a run, this afternoon. If you wanted.”

“I’d really like that,” Dan says solemnly. “Do you need a lift?”

“No. But if you maybe – no, whatever.”

“You could come here, before,” Dan says. “If you’re not working. We could have some lunch, quickly?”

“I’m working,” Lewis says, with a touch of shy pleasure in his voice. “I’ll meet you at the park at three-ish? But, like, thanks for the offer.”

“Yeah, totally, three. I’ll see you then.” They say their goodbyes, and Dan hangs up and taps out a quick text to Titan. _pub is a nogo this eve._

 __He receives a reply three minutes later. _oh REALLY ;)_ , and how the hell Titan can have any idea why the pub is a no-go, Dan doesn’t know, but that smugly winking smiley says that he at least suspects something. Dan puts his phone back in his pocket and pretends the smiley doesn’t exist.

***

“So,” Titan says, to the accompaniment of Hendon bellowing. They’re waiting to do another set of ergs, drinking water and wiping sweat off their faces, and Dan has a creeping feeling that he knows what’s coming.

“So,” he says, staring determinedly ahead and not looking at Titan.

“So I haven’t seen you much since the barbecue.”

“You see me every day, Tite, whatever.”

“I see you frequently,” Titan amends agreeably, “but we’re normally in a boat and I just don’t feel like we have a real manly heart-to-heart. A bit like now, really,” he adds, as Hendon shouts, “FRASER AND SMITH, YOU’RE UP,” and Dan has to smile a little, and murmur a heavily sarcastic, “ _Really_?” which Titan grandly ignores. “So I would like to know when I can see you again, and also to ascertain,” he ignores Dan’s snort, “to _ascertain_ whether what has been taking up your time is a certain chav.”

“He’s not-“ It’s sort of instinctive, and Dan bites the protest back.

Titan slides him a sly sideways grin. “Thought so,” he says, and then, “Free after this? We can go Pizza Express.”

“No, I-“ Dan pinches his nose. “I’m seeing Lewis,” he mutters, ignoring Titan’s grin.

“Invite him!”

“ _No_ , Tite, it’s not...” He trails off helplessly.

“Not what?” Titan asks, his face oddly serious and voice a little lower.

“You know.” Dan gestures widely. “We’re up in a second, just stop being so fucking nosy.”

Whatever Titan wants to say is cut off by, “VASSA AND LASH, MOVE IT,” and Dan pushes off the wall and moves towards the machines. Titan follows after a second.

***

Titan catches up with Dan as they spill out into the bright sunshine, hair wet from the showers and bodies aching. “Hey,” he says, “so I wasn’t just taking the piss, I would like to hang out sometime soon.”

“Yeah, sure,” Dan mutters distractedly, reading his phone screen. He has a text from Lewis – _not tru, he ws a god when he was youngr_ \- which makes him snort, and quickly thumb _wat the fuk evr, he ws always a weak player n u kno it_ before looking up at Titan’s solemn face. “Sorry, yes, that would be genuinely great.”

“Good. Because I’m going up to York next month, and we’re racing next week.”

“What are you wankers talking about?” Fergus asks, appearing suddenly and slinging an arm over Titan’s chest.

“Race next week. Uni in a month,” Dan supplies, nodding at Fergus. “You’re headed to Edinburgh, right, Crabby?”

“Fuck off,” Fergus says, with no heat.

“Ah, but _Crabby_ ,” Titan says, with a grin, knocking a friendly fist against Fergus’ arm. “Crabby, sweetheart.”

“Better than Titan, I suppose,” Fergus says equably.

“I’ve told you bastards to call me Mustang, anyway,” Titan says, and Josh breaks off his nearby conversation with Ant to laugh derisively at him. “What?” Titan says. “It’s a fucking awesome nickname.”

“In your wetdreams I will call you Mustang, gayboy,” Fergus says, squeezing the arm around Titan’s chest tight, leaning back and pulling him a millimetre off the ground. Which is impressive, Dan will acknowledge, because Titan’s pretty huge.

“Oh, fuck you, Crabby,” Titan laughs, when he’s regained his balance, and shrugs Fergus’ arm off. “Stop being a scraping octopus, go talk to someone else.”

“No, no, you guys are my _favourite_ ,” Fergus says. “And I want in on whatever you’re talking about, anyway, it’s going to be shit when we all fuck off.”

“I’ll be with you, Crabs,” Ant says.

“True, and we will dominate the rowing club together. Is everyone else going to keep rowing?”

There’s a chorus of agreement, and Dan grins at Josh. “See you next Boat Race, yeah?”

“In your dreams, you’ll be lucky if you make lightweight, Dan Vassa,” Titan says, cuffing the side of his head. “Josh has a chance, though.”

“Josh is like a stone lighter than me!” Dan protests, and Josh blows him a kiss before saying, “Josh is also not studying a doss subject like some of you fuckers, and so is probably not going to push it with the rowing,”

“Really?” Fergus says. “Josh, mate, that’s –“

“I’m going to _row_. I’m just not going to trial for any of the uni teams.”

“Not even the women’s team? Oxford’s women’s team is pretty good,” Ant says, ruffling Josh’s hair.

“Piss off, Ant.”

Dan looks around the loose circle and cannot imagine Lewis ever standing here, laughing with his friends and punching their shoulders and throwing cheerful insults around. When he tries to bring a picture to mind, there is only a blank space where he attempts to insert Lewis, and it makes him twitch with some indefinable emotion. He only realises he’s frowning when Titan boxes his ear gently and says, “So, maybe on Friday, then, guys? Carb-loading?”

“And on Saturday, for some alcohol-loading,” Fergus says.

“Sounds good,” Dan says, and when Ant and Tony have both agreed adds, “Will someone text the others? I have to go.”

“Later, Vass,” he gets in chorus, and another box from Titan, which he swats off with a scowl.

***

Dan has mostly managed to put Lewis’ mother’s BNP-voting boyfriend out of his mind, because it’s such an alien concept that he can’t make it fit with his reality, so it doesn’t ring any bells later when Lewis says, curled on the sofa with him and watching Red Dwarf, “Jerry saw you drop me off yesterday.”

“Sure,” Dan says, attention mostly on the exciting things happening on screen, and the rest taken up with tracing a pattern on the thin T-shirt at Lewis’ hip.

“Jerry,” Lewis repeats, and there’s something about the tight enunciation of the first sound that makes Dan look at him.

“God, you don’t know anything about me,” Lewis says on a harsh exhale. Dan just waits. “Mum’s boyfriend.”

“Oh.” And then, a second later, “ _Oh_.”

With a sudden flurry of movement, Lewis twists and pushes until he is straddling Dan, blocking his view of the TV and ducking his head away from Dan’s gaze. “What happened?” Dan asks, and Lewis says, “Nothing,” before leaning in and sucking at the skin under the hinge of Dan’s jaw, making him gasp and curl his toes involuntarily. He raises a hand to stroke at the skin under Lewis’ ear, sinking down further into the couch to give Lewis better access. Lewis raises his head, mouth slick, and looks at Dan for a second before Dan strains his head up to kiss him, wet and hot. They haven’t really done any of this in the last week of tentative touches, but there is intent in the heavy rock of Lewis’ hips and Dan lifts himself into it.

“Hold on a sec,” Lewis says, and slithers down awkwardly, landing with a thump on the floor between Dan’s automatically spreading legs. He has his hands on Dan’s fly before Dan can say anything, and it’s probably the sexiest thing Dan has ever seen in his life, Lewis’ mouth that close between his legs, blue eyes shadowed by long lashes and narrow fingers delicately easing the zipper on his jeans down. In the silence of Dan holding his breath, the slide of the zipper is obscene.

The moment doesn’t last, and Lewis says, “Kick these down, come on,” peremptorily, unaware of the awestruck nature of Dan’s thoughts.

“Sure, sure, are you sure?” Dan says, obeying and lifting his hips to get his boxers down as well. His dick comes eagerly free, already almost painfully hard.

“Why wouldn’t I be, not a big deal,” Lewis murmurs, and lowers his head, just breathing on the wet tip for a second or two before Dan groans and says, “Go on, please.”

Lewis glances up at him, grinning, and says, “This is why I like posh boys, so polite.” His mouth is around Dan’s dick before Dan can react, sucking _hard_ and taking him in deep, deeper than Dan’s felt before, soft throat around him and hands holding his shifting hips still.

It is a really horrifyingly short time of heat and suction before Dan, back arching so hard it hurts, says, “Come on, off, off, I’m going to come,” and Lewis pulls away, smiling widely up at him again, and uses his hand to stroke Dan the rest of the way. Two or three pulls later, there is a splash of white on the underside of Lewis’ jaw, the rest caught in his hand, and Dan moans from his toes at the sight.

Lewis rests his head against Dan’s knee, tipped forward, and says, “Sorry, you’re probably busy, can I stay over tonight?”

It takes a moment or two for the hushed, mumbled request to work its way through Dan’s blissed-out body and brain, and when it does he can’t stop himself, feels himself tense. “Did you just –“ He has no idea how to phrase this.

Lewis doesn’t raise his head. “’Cause he’s pretty fucking angry, and I don’t really want to get involved with that shit, he’s got a filthy mouth.”

Dan can’t switch gears this fast, there are still sparkling aftershocks drifting through his fingers and he’s spread-eagled, arms flung out. “Can you just come up here?” he says, staring at the ceiling. “Don’t you want -?”

“I’m fine,” Lewis says, and there’s nothing in his voice which indicates it to be untrue, which makes Dan even more uneasy. What transaction just occurred?

“Are you – I would have said yes.”

“Sure,” Lewis says, forehead still against Dan’s knee. “And now you won’t?”

“What, no! Come up here, for fuck’s sake.” He pulls himself together, limb by limb, and reaches down to tug on Lewis’ shoulders after fastening his fly. Lewis doesn’t resist, dirty hand held away from his body, ending up next to Dan on the sofa. “Here,” Dan says, stretching to retrieve the tissue box. “Here, are you sure I can’t –“ His other hand gropes firmly between Lewis’ legs, finding nothing like what he was expecting. Lewis is half-hard at most. Lewis brushes the hand away, and wipes his own hand off.

“Told you I’m fine.”

“Yeah, but –“

“I’m gonna go, whatever.” He’s halfway to standing, twitchy and nervous, before Dan has the presence of mind to grab at him, pull him down. Again, Lewis doesn’t resist, flopping onto the sofa beside Dan.

“You can stay whenever, but tonight for definite,” he says. Then he searches for words, but can’t think of any way to say _did I just get a blowjob as a sweetener?_ that won’t cause a (probably deserved) explosion, so instead tries, “As long as you need.”

“Okay, thank you,” Lewis says, and gives every appearance of being absorbed in Red Dwarf almost immediately. Dan closes his mouth on all of the things he wants to say.

***

Lewis ends up in the spare room, a proclamation of his mother’s that Dan doesn’t protest. His parents are quite good about his sexuality, but he knows there are limits to how comfortable they are with it in practice rather than in theory, and the thought of finding those limits makes him feel a little sick, so he is always extremely careful not to push.

It’s not quite one when Dan finally gives in to the urge to roll off his bed with a thump, opening the door to find a wide-eyed Lewis standing outside it. It’s only a second before they both start to giggle, very softly. “Great minds,” Lewis says, on the edge of hearing, and then, “Can I come in?”

“Please,” Dan says, gesturing grandly and shutting the door behind him.

Lewis crosses to the middle of the room, turns, breathes deep, and says, “I’m sorry, that was a... whatever, earlier. I...” He fidgets. He’s wearing a pair of Dan’s pyjama bottoms, long and loose on him, and Dan has been thinking over his contribution to this conversation for the last hour in bed.

“It’s okay,” he says firmly, taking the few steps towards Lewis with intent. “I’ll just do you and then we’re even.”

“I – what? – okay,” Lewis manages, the last one a gasped exhale as Dan sinks to his knees. Doing this while someone’s standing up isn’t really his favourite, the angle’s not quite right, but it’s kind of worth it for the shocky way Lewis is breathing already, eyes dark and hungry as he looks down at Dan. Dan tugs gently on the pyjamas and it takes almost nothing to get them falling down to Lewis’ feet. “Hang on, don’t you want a condom?” Lewis asks, and Dan shakes his head briefly.

“I’ll do what you did, pull off. Warn me, alright?” He leans forward and licks along the length of Lewis’s dick, warm and salty, and hears a sigh of, “Alright, Jesus Christ,” from above him.

It only takes a few soft licks to start a fine tremor in Lewis’ muscles. Dan can feel it in the hands which have come to settle over his where they are clasping Lewis’ hips, thumbs rubbing the prominent point of bone. Lewis is steady on his feet, but a hurried glance up along the length of him mid-suck finds his head fallen back, obscured by the clean line of his throat. His fingers twist and turn on top of Dan’s as Dan lips and sucks and licks, and his gasping, almost silent moans rise and fall with the movements of Dan’s mouth.

Dan’s jaw is barely aching when he feels gentle fingers nudging at his forehead, pushing him away, and he disentangles his hands from Lewis’ and gets them on Lewis’ dick, straining up on his knees to let the come splash on his chest after a couple of strokes. He drops his hands straight away, before Lewis can ask.

Lewis sinks to his knees almost immediately, eyes tracing the lines of white on Dan’s chest. “You just... you are so fucking hot,” he says, chest heaving, and he leans in to kiss Dan.

“Prove it,” Dan says, pulling back after a second or two, and it comes out more like a plea than anything, which makes Lewis grin at him, narrow-eyed, and insinuate a hand into his pyjama bottoms, closing tight and perfect around Dan’s cock. Dan tips forward to rest his head in the angle between Lewis’ neck and shoulder, biting gently at the skin there and shuddering. He tips over the edge within seconds, biting his lip to hold back a gasping cry. Lewis’ free hand sinks into his hair, and they kneel together, breathing hard.

“Well,” Lewis murmurs, “ _you_ need a shower and some clean pyjamas.”

“Fuck off,” Dan says into his neck. It’s deeply unfortunate that he’s right, because Dan doesn’t want to move.

“Hey, so would you... if I leave before your parents get up, do you want to...”

“Yes, please, that would be nice.”

When Dan comes back after a quick and furtive shower, it’s to find Lewis already in his bed, curled in towards the wall and taking up very little space. Dan slides in beside him. He was trying to decide how to play this during the shower, mind working busily, but faced with the reality of a sex-smelling Lewis huddled under his duvet only one option seems at all reasonable. He rolls into Lewis, nudging up right behind him and putting an arm around his waist, spreading his hand flat across his belly.

Lewis stiffens for a second or two, and then says acerbically, “Good, because this could have been really awkward.”

Dan laughs into the back of his neck. “Go to sleep,” he says, laying a kiss there.

***

He opens his eyes blearily in the very early morning to Lewis pushing at his arm and saying, “Okay, okay, moving beds now.”

“’Kay,” he managed, and feels a brief kiss on his cheek as Lewis climbs over him. His eyes slide shut again.

***

He mentions the race to Lewis during breakfast, Coco Pops in front of Blackadder. “This weekend. My – uh, my parents can probably give you a lift. Like. You probably don’t even like rowing.”

“I don’t know a fucking thing about rowing, except that you’re all built like brick shithouses,” Lewis says comfortably, cheek against Dan’s shoulder and eyes on the TV. This whole morning, he’s been the most relaxed Dan’s ever seen him.

“Well, we sit in a boat,” Dan explains carefully. “And we pull really, really hard to make the boat go. And whoever pulls the hardest wins.” He gets a swat on the back of his head.

“I’d picked up that much, dickhead. It’s your last school race, innit?”

“Yeah, it’s –“ Dan has an unexpected lump in his throat. “Yeah. We’ve been rowing together since third form.”

“You and Titan?”

“There are eight of us. And a cox, but he’s a fifth former.”

Lewis slurps some milk from his bowl and says, “Yeah, alright, can I make a giant sparkly banner?”

“Fuck off, no,” Dan says, and barely pauses before adding, “And you should come to the pub. After.”

 _That_ makes Lewis tense, almost imperceptibly along Dan’s side. He doesn’t say anything except, “Mmm, sure,” though, and Dan is very conscious of how much he _likes_ this boy, despite the delicate nature of almost all interactions with him.

“I will be a lot less crap,” he promises, twisting to nose at Lewis’ ear. “I – I’m pretty out. I was gonna say we’re...” He trails off helplessly.

“Oh.” It’s very soft. “That’s – you want to?” There’s an edge of suspicion in his voice which Dan probably wouldn’t have heard a week ago. He nods, face in Lewis’ hair.

“Still not a set-up,” he says equally softly.

“If I get in the pub and your friends throw paint at me, I will probably kill you,” Lewis says, but he’s half-smiling.

“Or we could kill them together, more productively,” is Dan’s contribution, as he slides an arm around Lewis’ shoulders and turns back to the TV and Rowan Atkinson’s magnificent sneer.

***

Race day dawns fine, and continues fine. It’s not until they’re heading to the start line, tense and huddled low to the water, that Dan finally catches sight of Lewis perched on the bank halfway along the course, very close to King’s boathouse and in between two expansive picnicking groups. Both of Dan’s parents are helping at the King’s barbecue, part of Wickham and Lady Henrietta’s thank you for sharing the space, and Lewis looks very isolated, arms around his knees.

He doesn’t look unhappy, though, and when he hears the shouts of ‘WICKHAM’ he looks towards the boat. It’s too far to really make any kind of eye contact, but Dan is pretty sure Lewis can pick him out – he’s the only rower for miles around whose skin isn’t sparkling white, for one thing – and he treasures the awkward abortive wave Lewis sends in their direction.

It’s only a second or two before they’re past the boathouse and Lewis is out of sight. Dan squares his back and pulls slow and steady, until they reach the start line.

***

The race flashes by, six minutes of agony in his back and legs and arms, pushing on and on past the pain which he doesn’t ever really notice anymore, hasn’t for years, because what makes him an excellent rower is not what his muscles can do but what his brain can do, what his brain can ignore, far past the point that it should be able to. The spectators are an indistinguishable mass on the bank, shouting the names of their schools and their children’s schools in a roar in which it is impossible to pick out any individual encouragement.

When it’s over, they’ve placed well – behind Hampton and Eton and Abingdon and King’s, as expected, but ahead of most of the others, and especially ahead of Lasingstoke. For the final showing of the eight, it’s a good one. Dan doesn’t really take any of that in, of course, because he’s busy staggering ashore and retching. Titan leans against him, and it’s not entirely clear whether he’s helping, or whether he needs the support.

“Bloody good showing, lads,” he hears from Johnny, their cox, and he waves a weak hand in acknowledgement and continues staring at the ground and drinking water until he feels less like he wants to die.

“Right,” he hears finally from Fergus, as the roaring in his ears and the spots in his eyes are receding. “Fucking well done, guys. Johnny?”

Titan straightens up, wipes his face off, and grins. Dan follows. “Yes, Johnny,” Titan says. “Little Johnny.”

Craig’s advancing from the rear, and Johnny is sort of pretending to retreat, but mostly looking long-suffering. He’s tiny, it’s really not going to require the whole crew to pick him up, but it’s the last time.

Fergus and Titan take most of his weight, but every one of the eight has a hand on him somewhere – Dan has an ankle. They scramble down the last few steps to the river, Johnny muttering, “ _Guys_ ,” with very little actual protest, and then Titan shouts, “WICKHAM,” and they heave him in. He lands with a massive splash, and bobs up a second later, pushing his soaking and extensive fringe back to reveal a small and disgruntled face. “ _Guys_ ,” he says again.

“ _Johnny_ ,” Craig calls mockingly, and then, “Are we meeting at the Swan later, lads?” as Johnny squelches his way to shore. Josh and Titan both lean forwards to give him a hand up the bank. It only takes a single heave between them for him to come scrambling up, and Josh hands him a towel with a grin and a hair-ruffle.

“Sure, the Swan sounds good,” Neil contributes, hands in pockets and stance full of casual arrogance from a well-rowed race. “Lads?”

“No, they won’t let Johnny into the bar, that bartender’s nasty about under-eighteens,” Josh says, and Craig looks like he’s going to be a dick for a second before he catches Titan’s or Fergus’ eye, Dan can’t tell.

“Oh, true,” Neil acknowledges carelessly.

“Don’t put yourselves out,” Johnny’s voice says from under the towel, and Alasdair cuffs his head gently and tells him not to be ridiculous.

“Royal Barge over by Dan’s, then?” Craig tries, which produces general agreement and the low-voiced suggestion from Alasdair that they should invite Hendon, who is leaping down the steps towards them, face split by a wide grin.

“Boys!” he yells on reaching them, and there are handshakes and backslaps and heartfelt mutters of appreciation all round. Dan’s pretty sure he’s not the only one suddenly overtaken by the solemnity of the moment as the good cheer grinds to a halt and Craig says, “Last race, sir.”

“And you all did me proud, and I’m sure you will do so at uni as well,” Hendon says roughly. “And at least I’ve still got Johnny, that was some brilliant steering.”

“Thank you, sir,” Johnny says, and suffers through another few backslaps, looking more and more pitiable with each one.

“Sir,” Titan says, “we’re going to have a drink at the Royal Barge later, we were wondering if you’d like to join us.”

“A quick one would hit the spot, yes, thank you boys. Right,” he straightens up, and his voice takes on a familiar timbre, “gentlemen, get that boat onto the trailer sharpish, and Lensfield, get some dry clothes on.”

“Yes, sir,” comes in chorus, and they scatter swiftly.

***

In the minivan on the way home, Dan asks quietly, “Is anyone else bringing other friends to the pub?” and then has to repeat himself when Craig says, “What?” from the front.

“Yeah, sure,” is Titan’s languid response, but his eyes are sharp on Dan. “Bringing someone?”

“I’m sort of seeing a guy,” Dan says, and Craig retches and says, “TMI,” stridently.

“Fuck off, Johnson,” Titan says easily, “and stop being such a massive cock.”

“Whatever,” Craig says, cheerful, and it’s not dissimilar to an apology. He ruins it a bit by adding, “Still don’t want to hear it, though.”

“Whatever, Craig, that’s the end of it. I’m seeing a guy, I’m going to bring him along, if you guys aren’t bringing friends as well he’ll feel a bit crap.”

“Sal’s coming,” is Alasdair’s only contribution, and enough of the others chime in with specific non-boatie names that Dan can feel the tension in his chest unwind a little.

 _pub at 6 cu at mine at half 5?_ he texts to Lewis, in the quiet of the halfway point on the journey twenty minutes later. The van is rumbling along on the motorway, and every other person on board has headphones in. His muscles are still, an hour after the race, jumping shockily now and then, and there is a heavy ache in his back.

The soft chime of a new message makes him smile involuntarily, and Titan looks over at him with knowing eyebrows raised. Dan ignores him, and looks at his phone. _u went v fast, apparently thats gd. spent an hr in d car w ur parents n didn’t talk abt corruptin their son. pub sounds gd. x_ He focuses in on that _x_ and feels his smile widen.

 _whos corrupting who? x_ he sends rapidly, and then puts in his headphones and leans against the window, grinning out at the flat road outside.

***

Lewis is late, turns up at his door at about five forty-five. Dan’s parents are out for the evening, after showering him with hugs and kisses and congratulations, and Dan has showered and napped and generally put himself back together. Lewis fidgets on the doorstep, smiling up at him. “Look, I know I texted a bit of a pisstake, but you were actually fucking awesome. I think. Only saw you for a minute, in between observing the middle classes in their natural habitat.”

“No, I was,” Dan agrees. He’s loose and easy with the lassitude that comes from having completed heavy exercise, and he smiles back at Lewis, delighted by his life. “Pub’s just down the road, okay to go?”

“Just a minute,” Lewis says, and crowds him through the door, impressive given their relative bulks. Dan steps back and back, letting the door swing closed, and Lewis kisses him after a step or two, fierce and possessive, an arm hooked around the back of his neck pulling him down and a little off-balance. When he lets Dan go after a minute or two, Dan doesn’t really want to be released, and straightens up reluctantly. “Now we can go,” Lewis says with satisfaction.

It makes Dan laugh, he hasn’t really seen Lewis like this before. “Sure, okay,” he agrees easily, running a hand over Lewis’ head, stroking the bristles the wrong way.

***

Titan sees them first as they come down the towpath. All six wooden tables outside the Barge have been commandeered, and there are more people than Dan expected. Lady Henrietta’s first eight rowed their last race yesterday, though, so this looks like it might be a joint toast to the past and future. Titan’s waving them towards the bench next to him and he gives Dan a hearty backslap as he sits down. Dan winces, and Titan grins before turning to Lewis. “Nice to see you again, mate,” he says, even his ‘mate’ perfectly cut-glass.

“Likewise,” Lewis nods, a little gruff with what Dan thinks is nerves rather than aggression, and sits down next to Dan, an inch closer than necessary.

Dan nods to the others on the table, and says, “Josh, Fergus, Johnny, this is Lewis. Lewis, Josh, Fergus, Johnny.” He can tell that Lewis’ eyes are lingering sceptically on Johnny, bookended by Fergus and Josh, and adds, grinning, “Johnny’s the cox.”

“Whatever,” Johnny mutters, slouching in his seat. Josh and Fergus exchange friendly greetings with Lewis, everything chilled and pleasant all round, and Dan can feel the slight tension in his shoulders easing. “I’ll get us a couple, alright, Lewis?”

“Sure, thank you,” Lewis says a little stiltedly, but he seems comfortable enough, as Dan heads in to the bar, tuning in to whatever conversation Titan and Fergus were having before they arrived.

Dan makes sure to shake Hendon’s hand on his way in, exchanging sincere smiles and expressions of appreciation. He spots Min at the bar talking to Riko once he’s inside, and comes up behind her to pull on her ponytail. Riko gives him away with a brief eyeflick, though, and Min turns around to ward him off and then hug him. “Bloody well done, Dan, your form was excellent,” Riko says, kissing his cheek.

“Thanks, I – I’m sure yours was too?” He feels a little guilty as Riko laughs.

“Right, it was. What a shame we only had a quarter of the spectators Junior Men got, and that our beloved brother school didn’t turn out for us. There was no one there to see how spectacular I am.”

“We all see your spectacularness – spectacularity? – every day, Miss Nobushima,” Min says with a curtsey, and Riko says, “Ms, please, I’m having a feminist moment.” Dan laughs fondly at them both.

“I’m sorry, Riko. We were training yesterday, though. I mean, that’s not an excuse for most of the spectators, but let us off the hook a little.”

“Wittington would have placed seventh if the races were combined,” Riko says, as Dan signals for two pints from the barman.

“Fuck, really? Those girls are beasts.”

“They get faster every year. I think they might be robots,” is Min’s helpful contribution. And then, without much of a pause, “So, you’ve brought a special someone, Mr Vassa?”

“On a scale of one to ten,” Dan says, “how... how many people has Titan told?”

Riko grins. “You were trying for something witty there, weren’t you?”

“Yeah, I kind of lost it. But, uh, yeah. I brought – you’ve met Lewis, Min.” Min nods, smiling.

“And I’ve seen Lewis,” Riko adds.

“Really, where? – oh. The barbecue,” Dan says. “Did he stick out?”

“Not really, you’re being paranoid,” Riko says, gently.

“I just-“

“Are you embarrassed of him?” Min asks.

“No!” Dan says sharply, and it’s true, it’s not that at all. This embarrassment is more _for_ Lewis, even though Lewis doesn’t want it and would probably be more embarrassed if he knew. “I’m just... worried?”

“Right, but that worry looks a bit like embarrassment,” Min says diffidently. “I don’t mean to be a bitch, but try not to stress.”

Riko is nodding when he looks at her, and Dan hunches his shoulders. “I... yeah. You’re not being a bitch. I’m gonna get back outside before the Titan and Fergus banter makes him want to kill himself.” He collects his pints and waits for the change. Min nods and smiles and says, “I’ll come and say hi later,” and Riko adds, “I think _Fergus’_ banter is perfectly acceptable.”

Dan leaves with his change and his pints, laughing.

***

Back outside, Dan’s seat is still waiting for him beside a smiling Lewis. Josh is finishing a story as Dan approaches, and everyone else is laughing, but as Dan approaches he catches the tail-end of, “But Radnor _caught_ him swimming it, d’you remember?” Right, school stories, not likely to hit Lewis’ funnybone hard.

“Here,” he says, setting the pints down, “sorry I took a while.”

“Was wondering where you got to,” Lewis says, tilting his head back to smile up at him. The line of his throat reminds Dan with a flash of heat of how he looked as he was being sucked off.

“Talking inside the bar, sorry.” He sits down, and Lewis bumps shoulders with him. He’s still relaxed, Dan notes with pleasure, lit cigarette in hand.

“Dan, you only bought for you and y- Lewis?” Fergus demands. “Because it was pretty clearly your shout.”

“Right, and if anyone had offered to help carry, I would probably have obliged.” Sal has joined the table, perched on the very end of the bench beside Johnny, and he nods to her. “Hey Sal.”

Her soft greeting in reply is drowned out by Fergus’ outraged, “That’s not how the pub code works!” and Dan grins, ignoring him. “How’s the summer going?” he asks Sal, and hears Fergus lapse with a laughing, “Whatever.”

“Oh, not bad. Jack came back from France for a couple of weeks – my brother, he works there –“ she adds to Lewis, and Dan is pretty sure that he’s far more pleased by her consideration than Lewis is, “so that was nice.”

“You got the results you needed, right?” Dan would have heard from Alasdair if she hadn’t, but it’s polite to ask.

“Yep, heading to Leeds with Alasdair.” She looks pleased.

“I have a mate in Leeds,” Lewis puts in, blowing out smoke. “Nice city.”

“It is, isn’t it?” Sal smiles at him. “What about you, Lewis, where are you going for uni?”

“Oh, I’m not,” Lewis says, and the way that he’d said it to Dan, the slightly aggressive, slightly nervous way, is almost entirely absent, diluted down to a faint discomfort. Dan squeezes his knee, and even though Sal’s, “oh, okay,” is probably as awkward as Dan’s had been, the press of Lewis’ arm against his own remains relaxed.

***

Because Dan lives so close to the Barge, there is a migration to his house after last orders. Most of the Lady Henrietta’s girls have gone elsewhere, talking about going into Shepton, and Johnny has gone home and Mr Hendon left them several hours ago with hearty handshakes, so it ends up being just the crew with a few additionals. And Lewis. Lewis had made noises about heading home, but Dan had overridden him, fairly sure that when Lewis said ‘home’ he meant ‘a miscellaneous friend’s house because I have not actually been home for several days’, and determined that the miscellaneous friend’s house would be his tonight.

It’s a nice night, and they end up raiding Dan’s mum’s picnic blanket pile and setting up in the garden. Fergus and Titan and Craig head out on a beer run to the twenty-four hour Sainsbury’s, and people settle in clumps on the blankets, Alasdair and Sal here, Josh and Neil and Ant and Ant’s two friends with heads bent together there, Craig’s girlfriend Anna talking to Fergus’ sort-of girlfriend Julia in the corner nearest the wine. Dan surveys the scene and chooses an unoccupied blanket, flopping onto his back and patting the space next to him for Lewis. Lewis joins him, space between their bodies, and they stare up at the dark, slightly star-speckled sky, Dan’s laptop playing indie music softly from the kitchen window.

“Alright?” Dan says, after a while.

“Yeah.” Lewis’ phone chimes, and he wriggles it out of his jeans pocket to check it, face glowing blue in the light of the screen. Dan’s not sure if they’ve reached the stage where he can ask who it is yet, so instead he cranes his neck to take a sip of his beer without spilling it on himself. He’s exhausted, and he’s going to be very sore tomorrow, he can tell.

Lewis closes his phone with a snap and says, “Can I crash here tonight?”

Dan glances across at him. “Yeah.” The slight surprise must be audible in his voice, because Lewis flushes and looks away. They haven’t talked about the way he asked last time, and they’re not going to.

“Alright,” Lewis says, opening his phone to start a text to someone. “I’ve got a shift in the morning,” he adds, but it’s to himself more than Dan.

“Have you – have you been home since?”

“I can’t be bothered.” Lewis’ voice is tight.

“Are you-“

“Yes, I’m fine,” Lewis says, almost snapping it. “I don’t need rescuing, don’t worry, I wasn’t kicked out. Mum’s texting me right now to get me to come home.”

“Oh. Right.”

Lewis can’t stand the unasked questions for more than a second or two, because he says without looking away from his phone, “I’m not happy with some of the shit Jerry said.”

Dan nods and takes another sip of his drink, sitting up this time. He looks down at Lewis, legs hitched up and phone held up in front of his face, skinny and tense, and then looks away, dropping one hand to rest on Lewis’ stomach. The muscles there jump and tighten at his touch, but he hears Lewis let out a deliberate breath and then relax. Dan keeps drinking, feeling the gentle rise and fall of Lewis’ breathing and hearing the rapidfire tapping of his text.

The garden door swings open and Craig bounds in , trailed by Fergus and Titan. “Hola, gayboys, we come with beer,” he says loudly, and Lewis twitches under Dan’s hand. Dan has always picked his battles, and this one has never been one he cared about, but this time he says, “Do you mind, dickhead?”

Craig looks at him with surprise, and then says, “Oh. Uh. Sorry?” He sounds confused, and Dan responds with an embarrassed mutter of, “Whatever, not a big deal.” Lewis is still texting.

“How do you still have the energy to be offensive?” Titan asks Craig with mild curiosity.

“How does Dan have the energy to be offended?” Fergus responds, as Craig sets the beer down. “The universe is full of mysteries.”

“Oh, shut up,” Dan says. “I don’t care that much.” He drains his beer, and rubs a circle on Lewis’ belly with his thumb.

Fergus and Craig join Anna and Julia, and Titan comes to drop next to Dan and Lewis. Lewis has tensed up again, and he sits up when Titan sits down, brushing Dan’s hand off. “Alright,” Titan says, handing Dan a new can.

“Alright,” Dan responds, and Lewis nods.

“Can I crash here tonight?” Titan asks, unconsciously echoing Lewis. “I’m not quite safe to drive, and I’ll need sleep before I hit the sober point.”

“Yeah, sure, you can have the spare bed,” Dan says.

Lewis says, “Cool, I’ll take one of the sofas,” attention on his phone, and Titan’s brows raise. Dan shrugs helplessly in response, and tries a cautious, “You don’t have to.”

Lewis looks up, eyes darting between Dan and Titan. “I-“

“We’re cool,” Titan says, unexpectedly, soft and serious. Dan blinks in confusion. “No one’s got a problem with Dan or you. Or Dan and you.”

Oh. Dan looks over at Lewis, whose mouth is a compressed line, and touches a hand to his knee. “They’re idiots, but they’ve always mostly coped with the concept, I promise,” he says.

“I’m not an idiot,” Titan says, voice back to his normal blithe cheer, taking a deep swallow from his can.

“You’re the king of the idiots, Tite,” Fergus shouts, and Titan flips him off.

“True, I am your king,” he says, and turns back to Dan and Lewis.

“Okay,” Lewis says, with a sharp nod and the very slightest twitch of a smile, getting his cigarettes out of his pocket. “Not the sofa, then.”

Dan smiles at him.

***

It’s in the small hours of the morning, Titan in the spare room and Lewis quiet against Dan, that Dan says, softly enough that Lewis can pretend not to hear him, “Wanna tell me what’s going on at home, then?”

Lewis’ hand is curled around Dan’s, fingers not quite interlaced, and his thumb is tapping against Dan’s pulse. The tapping pauses briefly at the question, and then resumes, and Lewis says, “I’ll probably go back sometime soon. Can’t afford not to.”

“Don’t want to?”

“It’s not that big a deal. Jerry’s not violent – I told you that already. He just says a lot of shit.”

“Knows you’re gay?”

“Probably.” Dan can feel the shrug in the dark. “Never told him. My mum knows and they’ve been together for a couple of years.”

Dan can’t help the “Why?” that escapes, and Lewis shrugs again.

“She likes him. And he’s got a bit of money.”

“Okay,” Dan says blandly, and then, “So he thinks we’re together?”

“No, God, that would go down even worse. Just thinks you’re a mate. A mate with a car.”

“A mate who’s not white,” Dan says.

“Yeah,” Lewis says uncomfortably. “That was what he was saying shit about.”

“About-“

“About you.”

“And you left,” Dan says, hearing the surprise tingeing his own voice.

“Yeah, I didn’t... Oh, fuck, can we just go to sleep. Please?” Lewis sounds plaintive, and Dan smiles at him in the dark, tugging him a little closer.

“Goodnight,” he says, and gets a kiss to his throat in response.

***

Lewis wakes him up early the next morning, squirming to extricate himself. “Work,” he says in response to Dan’s half-aware grumbling. “Got to catch the 7.30 bus.”

“I’ll drive you,” Dan says.

“’S okay,” Lewis begins, but Dan ignores him, stretching and yawning. He aches everywhere, feet to fingers, but it’s an ache which fills him with the remembered satisfaction of a race well-rowed, and adds to the morning’s feeling of well-being, secret warmth in his chest with the memories of last night’s conversation. He catches Lewis’ hand and presses a kiss to the centre of his palm, repeating, “I’ll drive you. Want a shower?”

Lewis visibly capitulates. “Yeah, alright, I’ll be quick. Can I have a towel?”

“Use one of the ones on the rack, it’s fine.”

He rolls out of bed when Lewis is gone, wincing as he stands up and everything aches even more. His eyes fall on the box in the corner into which he’s been desultorily putting university-bound possessions throughout the summer, and he realises with a start that the day that he leaves for uni is about two and a half weeks away. The whole time he’s getting dressed, his eyes keep straying back to the box.

Lewis comes back in, towel around his waist, and Dan says, “I’ll make some toast,” and escapes before Lewis can somehow read his mind and understand what he’s thinking about.

***

When Dan gets back from dropping Lewis off, he doesn’t go back to his bed. He’s too awake now, and he doesn’t want to see the box again, so he goes into the spare room, sitting down on the end of the bed and deliberately bouncing. Titan jolts awake with a, “Huh?” and then glares at him through half-slitted eyes. “Vassa.”

“Lash.” Dan nods, allowing his amusement at the state of Titan’s hair to fill a little of the hollowness which has opened inside his throat. He bounces again. Titan kicks him, hard, and then rolls over onto his back and stares at the ceiling with a heavy sigh.

“Right, Vass, I’m going to use my powers for good and have a guess.” Dan freezes, heart beating hard. “You, like the manly man you are, want to talk about your feelings.”

“Whatever,” Dan says, and Titan kicks him again.

“You better want to talk about your feelings, because otherwise you’ve just destroyed my REM cycle for nothing.”

“Your REM cycle? Fuck off, Titan.”

“It’s very important,” Titan says grandly. “Do I have to guess what fantastically girly feelings you’re dying to talk about?”

Dan flushes and studies his hands.

“Alright,” Titan says, a little softer. “Uni’s soon, right?”

Dan shrugs, and then says, “I didn’t expect...”

“Yeah,” Titan says, and nudges Dan with his toes. “Wanna play COD4?”

“Yeah,” Dan agrees gratefully. Titan pads after him into his room, hair still in a ridiculous state, and they spend a few hours killing people and not talking.

There’s only one little interruption, where Titan says, eyes on the screen, “If you want to keep going with him, you might be able to make it work. You need to talk to him,” and Dan says, “Yeah.”

***

The day after, Dan’s in Lewis’ Tesco, not by design and not expecting to see Lewis. His mother needs someone to carry shopping, and she comes here for her big weekly shop. He hasn’t really spoken to Lewis since yesterday, only a few texts, and he’s surprised to round a corner, having been sent by his mother to find light soy sauce, to see him shelving tinned tomatoes. He’s talking to someone in a baseball cap, but Dan barely takes note of that. “I thought you were on the morning shift this week,” he says, startling himself by how quickly he smiles and moves forward at the sight of him.

Lewis jumps a little, and a smile dawns almost automatically on his face as well as he turns around. “Oh, hey. Yeah, someone’s sick, I took the shift.” Then his smile tightens as he glances at the guy standing next to him, and says, “Uh, Wayne, this is Dan.”

“Hey,” Dan says, putting out a hand to shake. Wayne is bigger than Lewis, about as tall as Dan, and looks to be about their age. His clothes put him firmly and immediately in Lewis’ social category, and his, “Alright,” as he shakes Dan’s hand keeps him there.

“So, you’re, uh –“ Dan glances at Lewis. “A friend?”

“Schoolfriend,” Lewis says, returning to his tomato shelving.

“And we live in the same block, innit,” Wayne says.

“Oh, right,” Dan says, and then flounders. He has no idea where to start this conversation.

Lewis’ mouth downturns at the corners, and he says to Wayne, after a sharp glance at Dan, “Go on, mate, you were saying about Shirley.”

“Yeah,” Wayne says, with an apologetic smile at Dan. His face is friendly. “So, she’s pregnant,” Lewis pauses in his shelving, “which is going down about as well as you’d think, innit.”

“Shit, mate.” Lewis starts working again, and Dan says nothing, just stands there awkwardly.

“Yeah,” Wayne says, shrugging. “I think – I hope – she’s going to get rid of it.”

“Your mum’ll lose her shit,” Lewis says.

“She already is,” Wayne says, shrugging, “and Delroy’s a decent sort, innit, I think he’ll back Shirl up.”

“Is she your sister?” Dan asks, and shuffles his feet when Lewis and Wayne both look at him, Wayne open and Lewis scowling.

“Yeah,” Wayne says, “sorry, blood, you’re not interested in this shit.”

“No, it’s okay,” Dan says, embarrassed. “Go ahead. It sounds important.”

“Ah, no, it’s okay,” Wayne says, “I’ll catch you this evening anyway, Lew.”

“Yeah, mate, we’ll have a chat. And listen, my best to Shirl.”

“Cheers,” Wayne says. “Dan, nice to meet you, Lewis has mentioned you a couple of times.”

“Nice to meet you,” Dan says, managing a smile. He’s aware of Lewis’ fierce eyes on him.

Wayne disappears down the aisle with a wave and a smile, and Lewis turns straight back to his shelving, the line of his back tight with what Dan recognises as anger. For a second, he wants to turn around and go looking for soy sauce, but the impulse only last for as long as it takes him to blink, before he steps closer to Lewis and says, “What did I do?”

“Ugh.” Lewis rubs his eyes for a second and then says, voice strained, “Not that much, am I being an overreacting shit again?”

“Um,” Dan says. “No?”

“You...” Lewis puts the last two tins on the shelf with a slam. “Whatever, it’s okay.” His shoulders are still hunched tight. “Wayne’s a good guy,” he adds, “whatever you thought.”

“I – yeah. I thought that. His sister-“

“His sister is sixteen and the smartest person in the whole family,” Lewis says, voice suddenly sharp. “Whatever you’re going to say, don’t.”

“Lewis,” Dan says. “Hey, can you... tell me what made you angry?”

There’s a second where Lewis’ shoulders winch even more rigid, and then he relaxes in a rush, leaning his forehead against the shelf in front of him. “I’m supposed to be shelving peaches now,” he says, but it’s not a refusal. Dan waits. “Christ, what are you getting out of this?” Dan still waits, but he reaches out to squeeze Lewis’ shoulder briefly. “Right, from my point of view, what just happened is you were a bit... not that pleased to meet a friend of mine, and heard some shit about his life which I’m pretty sure you’re making judgements on right now, and I don’t want to hear whatever those judgements are.”

Dan bites back the immediate angry reaction, and waits for a second until he can say, “Still not great at giving me the benefit of the doubt, right?”

Lewis’s laugh is small and dry and bitter. “Getting better.”

“I’d like to meet more of your friends,” Dan says. “If that’s okay.”

“I – you looked uncomfortable as fuck just then, why would you?”

“Yeah, I’m just.” Dan can’t explain it, how completely out of his depth he is when the conversation can’t start with _where are you going for uni?_ or _what school did you go to?_ or _how shit were A-levels?_ Or maybe it _can_ start with those, maybe the fact that he thinks it can’t is another symptom of his... whatever. “You’ve met mine.”

“I’m not out to most of my local friends.”

“Okay, no problem.”

“So it’d be a bit weird to be like, ‘Hey, guys, here’s this posh guy I picked up. He’s only here for two more weeks before he goes to Cambridge, but whatever, right?’” Lewis says, and turns back to his cart. “I need to shelve these peaches.”

“So that’s a... no?”

“Yep,” Lewis says, eyes focused past Dan. “That’s a no. You wouldn’t get on, anyway. See you later.” And he’s gone.

***

Dan sends him a text when he’s stopped fuming. _please come over 2moro?_

 __He gets a response that evening. _yh ill come afta my shift._

 __***

“Dan,” his mother calls up the stairs. “Your – Lewis is here!”

Dan comes out of his room to peer over the banisters. “Come up, Lewis,” he yells. “Thanks, mum.” He goes back into his room without waiting for a response. Lewis pushes open the door a second or so later, glass of orange juice in hand and frowning. “Hey,” Dan says, twisting to look at him over the back of the sofa. “Listen, I hate to be the one to say it, but we need to talk.”

“Really,” Lewis says.

“About, like, Cambridge.”

“Uh huh.” Lewis sets the orange juice down on Dan’s bedside table and comes around to the front of the sofa, to stand in front of Dan. He looks at Dan for a second, expressionless, and then slides to his knees, graceful and fluid.

“What!” Dan yelps. The sight hasn’t lost any of its power to dry his mouth, and Lewis glances up at him, a flash of blue through thick blonde lashes. He mouths a little at Dan’s half-hard cock through his jeans, and Dan’s hips twitch up towards the heat involuntarily.

“Really wanna talk?” Lewis asks, and his voice is smug but his face is still a little blanker than is usual for him, and Dan doesn’t want to repeat his awful mistake.

“Yeah,” he says, the end of the sound trailing off into a low groan as Lewis reaches a hand up to pinch at his nipple through his T-shirt. He pulls himself back together, and says, “No, really, yeah.”

“Fine, no farewell fuck, I get it,” Lewis snaps, pulling himself to his feet with a suddenness that leaves Dan’s head spinning. There’s a heavy warmth between his legs which keeps drawing his attention if he lets it, and Lewis is glaring down at him.

Dan swallows, and straightens up, and says, “What the fuck, farewell?”

“Yeah,” Lewis says, and frowns at him confusedly.

“I – no,” Dan says. “Unless you want to?”

“Unless I want to what? Fuck? Sure, whatever.”

Dan yelps, “No!” as Lewis goes to kneel again, and Lewis stops himself. “Wanna sit down?” Dan says, after an uncomfortable moment or two. “I think we’re crossing wires again.”

Lewis huffs, and shrugs, and sits down stiffly. “Whatever.”

“I – if you want to end it, sure. You seemed like maybe you did a bit yesterday.”

“No, I didn’t want to introduce you to my friends, there’s a difference,” Lewis says, and then snaps his mouth shut.

“Okay, cool,” Dan says, skating right over that. “I don’t want to either.”

“For a couple of weeks,” Lewis says impatiently.

“No, I... do you want to try?”

“Try what?” Lewis says, and his voice fades on the ‘what’ as his brows go up. “Try while you’re at uni?”

Dan takes a breath. This is painful, pushing himself forwards and waiting for Lewis to smack him back. “I really like you. And I’m feeling a bit shit about putting an expiration date on this... whatever.”

“Oh,” Lewis says, a long exhale of breath. There’s something soft and pleased in his voice. “But all I do is get angry at you.”

Dan shrugs. “You do other stuff as well. And all I do is fuck up, so.”

“Not really,” Lewis says awkwardly. “And this is a yes, by the way.”

“Thank you for the clarification,” Dan says, suddenly smiling so widely that it stretches the dry patch on his bottom lip.

“I mean, just _try_ , right. I don’t know if it’ll last. But yeah, fuck it, we don’t have to automatically assume it’ll end, do we. Do we?” He glances at Dan.

“Yeah, exactly,” Dan says. It’s ridiculous how easy this can sometimes be, how the awkward tension can just snap and leave them looking at each other like this.

Lewis is abruptly grinning, secret and sly. “A not-farewell fuck?” he asks, already sliding closer and putting his hand over Dan’s nascent erection. Dan catches a short whine in the back of his throat, abortively bucking up into the hard pressure. “Yeah, I’m going to take that as a yes,” Lewis says companionably, leaning against Dan’s side and undoing the button on his jeans with one hand. He inches the zipper down.

“Not even a kiss?” Dan says, and he manages to make it teasing, even though his voice wavers a little. Lewis mouths the hinge of his jaw, and Dan shudders and turns his head. Their noses bump for a second, and then they’re kissing, soft and messy.

“Always sofas,” Lewis mutters into Dan’s mouth.

“Wanna try a bed?” Dan asks, pulling back a little. Lewis is kneading gently at his trapped erection, and it suddenly feels like the right thing to do.

Lewis darts a glance at him through his lashes and says, “We could even get _naked_.” Dan’s hips twitch and he kisses Lewis hard.

“Fuck,” Dan says suddenly, pulling back again. “We can’t, we can’t, Mum’s downstairs.”

“Bollocks,” Lewis says, hand pausing its maddening movements. Dan stifles a whimper at the loss of friction.

“She’s going out this afternoon, there’s a talk at the Wallpaper History Society –“

“The _what_?” Lewis says, and he’s laughing. “Oh my God, how is that real?”

Dan grins at him. “She’ll be gone in an hour or so, I think.” He lifts Lewis’ hand away from the gap in his jeans and zips them up, wriggling uncomfortably.

“Nakedness later, then,” Lewis says, and leans into Dan. “Want to watch something?”

“Sure.”

They end up putting Only Fools And Horses on, after Dan closes the curtains to dim the room. The loss of tension has left him floating, slumped bonelessly against the back of the sofa, and Lewis is tilted towards him, occasionally watching the TV but most frequently with his face turned up towards Dan, kissing slow and lazy. He breaks away every so often to leave brief stinging bites on Dan’s neck which make Dan gasp, and Dan responds by sucking a hickey over his collarbone which leaves Lewis writhing, tiny restless movements of his hips. At one point, Lewis says into Dan’s neck, “Sorry, I was a dick yesterday,” and Dan rubs a hand over his shoulders and says, “Let’s not,” because he feels like they might fight about it, and he doesn’t want to do that now, when he’s loose and happy and turned-on.

Lewis shrugs and nods, and slides his hand under the hem of Dan’s T-shirt, tracing shivery lines on the thin skin of his belly, circling around his bellybutton with concentration. “A couple of my mates are going to the Shepton Meadows this evening if you want to come,” he says a moment or two later, looking up at Dan.

“I – yeah, okay,” Dan says, hiding his smile in Lewis’ mouth.

***

His mum leaves eventually, calling, “See you at five, Danny,” up the stairs, and Dan feels like he’s been mostly hard _forever_ , jumping to his feet eagerly. Lewis grins up at him, and says, “Naked?” starting to wriggle out of his T-shirt.

“Alright,” Dan says, dropping his jeans and reaching for the hem of his T-shirt, feeling exposed as Lewis gazes up at him. He can’t keep his breathing even as Lewis strips, seeing his body in fits and starts – elegant feet covered and exposed as Lewis slides his baggy shorts off, pale soft flesh on his stomach, hard edge of his shoulder, bony knee, long fingers. He feels like if he focuses on the whole it will dazzle him.

“You?” Lewis says, and Dan realises that he’s paused, T-shirt lifted halfway up his chest.

“Yeah, me,” he says, shaking the moment off and pulling the T-shirt over his chest.

Lewis stands up to get rid of his boxers, and he’s there, in front of Dan, wearing nothing. Dan’s breath stops in his chest for half a second as Lewis smiles at him, wide and crooked. Lewis reaches out and runs a finger over the waistband of Dan’s boxers before pushing at them. Dan lets them be wriggled over his hips and then there’s nothing between them and a soft look in Lewis’ eyes.

Dan steps forward, sliding his arms over Lewis’ shoulders and pulling him forward. They both make a noise as their chests and hips and cocks come into contact, and Lewis presses his forehead to Dan’s shoulder and says, “God, I hope your mum hasn’t forgotten her keys or anything.”

Dan laughs, and kisses the top of his head, and says, “Right, bed.”

They end up on their sides, facing each other. Dan kisses a line over the planes of Lewis’ chest, mouthing at his nipple and making him squirm. Lewis strokes the length of Dan’s side, palming his hip and pulling him closer and pushing him away in small anxious movements. “Wanna try anything fancy?” Dan says, and Lewis shakes his head and pulls at Dan until he rolls on top of him. “Just this?” Dan asks, thrusting a little. Lewis shudders and nods.

So they end up rocking against each other until Lewis comes with a soft cry and a bite to Dan’s shoulder, and Dan comes soon after, looking down at Lewis’ wrecked face and bracketing it with his elbows, hands linked together over Lewis’ head. Lewis strokes his cheek and murmurs softly as Dan sinks down half-over him, breathing in harsh gasps.

“So we’re kind of together then,” Lewis says, voice slow and unconcerned in the hush after.

“I introduced you to my friends, I think so,” Dan says, tapping a lazy rhythm onto Lewis’ bicep.

“Yeah,” Lewis says. “I... should I do the same?” He sounds stressed, suddenly, and the loss of contentment makes Dan frown, craning his neck to see Lewis’ pinched face.

“I was already out to mine,” he says. “It’s not a big deal.” It feels like maybe it will be someday soon, but not right now.

“Right,” Lewis says, tugging on one of Dan’s short curls and letting it spring back.

“Yeah,” Dan says, shifting a little bit so that his hair’s not within such easy reach and laying his palm flat on Lewis’ chest. “And it might be a bigger deal for you, anyway.”

“Because?”

Dan opens his mouth, and then snaps it shut, because the answer to that is, _Guys dressed like Wayne was aren’t that open-minded, are they?_ and he’s suddenly sure that won’t go down well. “Because you haven’t told them already,” he says instead.

“Yeah, sure.” Lewis yawns, and Dan smiles.

“Nap?”

“Mmmmm.” Lewis has shut his eyes.

“Cool.”

***

Both of Dan’s parents are home when Dan swims awake – he can hear his father’s voice, a bass enquiry, and the lighter response of his mother. He checks the clock – six – and pokes Lewis lightly in the side. “Want to stay for supper? We can go out after?”

“Huh?” Lewis bats at his hand and rolls away, burying his face in the pillow.

“Lewis Lewis Lewis.” Dan walks his fingers up Lewis’ spine, ticking off each vertebra with a gentle tap. “Food?”

“Fuck off,” Lewis says into the pillow.

Dan leans forward to press a wet sucking kiss to the top of his spine, and Lewis rolls his shoulders with a shivery sigh. “Supper?” Dan says again.

“Won’t your mum mind?” Lewis says, muffled.

“’S okay. What about yours? You going home tonight?”

Lewis shrugs uncomfortably, and then says, “Sure, tea’s okay.”

“Tea’s at four o’clock,” Dan says, comfortably.

“Oh, fuck off, wanker. Tea tea tea.”

Dan laughs, and rolls onto his back, scratching his stomach where the come has dried in itchy flakes. “This is going to be a bit of an operation,” he says, after a second. “We both need showers.”

“And the shower’s in view of the kitchen,” Lewis says, laughing into the pillow.

“Fuck it, you use my parents’.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, you’re a guest, it’ll be fine.” He strokes Lewis’ back, and then rolls out of bed.

***

Lewis is still getting dressed when Dan pads downstairs. “Hey Dad,” he says, going into the kitchen.

“Danny V,” his dad says, looking up from where he’s chopping garlic, smiling widely. His mother is washing up, her blonde hair in a messy ponytail, and the kitchen smells of peppers and onion and thyme.

“What’s for supper?” Dan asks.

“Curry chicken,” his dad says. “Ready soon.”

“Is there enough for Lewis?”

His parents exchange a glance, and his mum says, “He’s still here?”

“Yep, we’re going out later, is there enough?” Dan repeats.

“Of course,” his mum says. “Come and dry up, please.”

“Are you making rice and peas, dad?” Dan asks, obediently taking a drying-up cloth from the back of the pantry door.

“Having a bit of a craving,” his father says, smiling at Dan over his shoulder. “We haven’t eaten anything Jamaican for weeks.”

“I cook what I know,” his mum says, a little tightly.

“Just thought it was a nice night for it,” his dad says. “We’ll eat in the garden, and I can talk to the famous Lewis.”

“Famous?”

“I’ve only met him the once, I seem to keep missing him otherwise,” his dad says. “Are you at the boyfriend stage yet?”

“Dad,” Dan says, a teenaged whine, and he focuses on getting the bubbles off the saucepan he’s just taken from the draining board.

His dad laughs, deep and infectious. “Your mother has been keeping me updated,” he says cheerfully.

“She doesn’t know anything,” Dan says sulkily.

“She’s the cat’s mother,” his mum says, tapping his cheek with a wet spoon. Dan jumps and makes an incoherent noise of protest, and Lewis laughs from the doorway, which makes all three of them turn.

Lewis looks nervous, eyes wide. “Um, hi. Melissa, Mr - Reggie.”

“Hello, Lewis,” Dan’s dad says. “You’re staying for supper?”

“If that’s okay.”

“Of course, delighted. We’re having curry chicken.”

“Oh, cool,” Lewis says. “Can I do anything to help?”

“You and Dan could lay the garden table, actually,” Dan’s mum says. “Dan, the rest of this will drain.”

“Aye-aye,” Dan says. “Lewis, can you grab some plates from that cupboard? Mum, do you want a tablecloth?”

“Yeah, let’s have one,” his dad says.

“Okay.” Lewis is still looking for the plates. “Not that cupboard, the one next to it,” Dan tells him. “Up a bit. On the left, there.”

“Got them.” Lewis retrieves four of the willow-pattern plates.

A few minutes later, they’re in the garden with a tray of cutlery and crockery and glassware and a red checked tablecloth. “is this... a special occasion?” Lewis asks.

“No, we – uh.” Dan concentrates on spreading the tablecloth. “We’re too...?”

“It’s nice,” Lewis says. “Maybe a bit much.”

“Sorry.”

“Eating in front of the TV’s less stressful.”

“More entertaining as well, probably.”

“I don’t know.” Lewis’ cheek is dimpling. He starts setting out cutlery, and Dan suppresses a wince, because he’s laying the fork and knife together. Lewis glances up at him. “No?”

“Uh. Mum likes it like this.” Dan demonstrates. “And the glass there.”

“Right, no problem.” The dimple has deepened. “You are a ridiculous human being.”

“Whatever,” Dan says, hiding his smile.

“Dan! Do you want a beer?” his mother calls from the kitchen window.

“Do you?” Dan says to Lewis, who nods his head, attention on the positioning of the placemats. “Yeah, and for Lewis too, please!” he calls to his mum.

“Okay, we’ll be out in a sec!”

Dan helps Lewis finish laying, and by the time they’re done his parents are ferrying food outside, rice and peas and fried plantains and the pan of curry chicken. “Thank you, boys,” his mum says. “Here are your beers, have a seat. Lewis, please help yourself.”

“Thank you,” Lewis says, taking a seat and hesitating.

“Go on,” Dan says. “You’re the guest, serve yourself first.” Lewis glances at him and then reaches for the curry chicken serving spoon.

“So, Lewis, how are you?” Dan’s dad says, when everyone has food on their plates. “How’s Tesco?”

“Uh,” Lewis says, forkful of food halfway to his mouth. He sets it down. “Fine, thank you.”

“Let the boy eat, Reg,” Dan’s mum says, and Reggie says, “Sorry, Lewis,” with a smile.

“How was work, Dad?” Dan asks.

“Not bad, I met with some new clients. How was your wallpaper talk, Mel?”

“Monica seemed happy, I must admit I didn’t follow the thread of the whole thing. But there were some attractive patterns on display.”

“Mum’s an artist,” Dan says to Lewis.

“I know,” Lewis says. “We talked about it when I got a lift from them. Lino prints and stuff.”

Melissa smiles at him. “Good memory. Although I suppose it wasn’t that long ago. What does your mother do, Lewis? I don’t think I ever asked?”

“Uh, she doesn’t really do anything. She likes making doll’s clothes, though, for like, Barbies.”

“Oh, lovely, I’ve always wished I could sew,” Melissa says, and Dan touches Lewis’ thigh under the table and smiles at him. Lewis smiles back, soft and small.

***

The Shepton Meadows are dark and cold, only slightly lit by the light of the nearby riverside pubs, and Dan hunches his Jack Wills jacket around himself. He left the ‘sitting around and drinking cheap cider’ phase when he was about fourteen, and he’s not thrilled by its reintroduction – apparently this is what Lewis’ mates do, though.

There are quite a lot of people on the meadows, and Lewis digs out his phone. “I’ll just give them a ring,” he says, but then he seems to spot his targets, and says, “Never mind, there’s Jules.”

There are four of them, two white and two black, all wearing the hats and necklaces and brand names that mark them out as being from a completely different world to Dan, and Dan wishes he’d chosen different outerwear. “Hey,” Lewis says, Dan following in his wake, and receiving, “Alright,” from all four of the others, standing up to greet them. “Hey, guys, this is my friend Dan.”

Dan shakes hands and gets nods from, apparently, Austin, Derek, and Julian, and definitely from Wayne, whose smile is warm. “Bring any booze, Lew?” Austin asks. He’s tall and reserved-looking, a swirling pattern shaved into his head.

“Yeah, we got some.” Lewis drops the plastic bag onto the grass and sits down, and the others all follow suit. “You all drinking?”

“Not tonight,” Derek, the other white boy, says. “Got to be on site tomorrow, innit.”

“You’re a builder?” Dan asks, and gets a look of slight disdain.

“Nah, doing a carpentry apprenticeship with Wayne.”

“Oh, right, cool.” Dan retrieves a can of cider from the bag and pops it open, concentrating on his hands. Lewis shuffles an inch closer to him.

“Any news on Shirl, Wayne?” he asks.

“She’s got an appointment tomorrow, innit, Delroy’s taking her.”

“Your mum washing her hands of it, is it?” Julian asks. He’s short and wide-faced, shoulders heavy with muscle.

“More or less.” Wayne shrugs. “She’ll get over it. Here, Dan, pass me a can?” Dan passes one, and Wayne smiles at him and says, “Cheers, bruv.”

“Good that Delroy’s around, innit,” Julian says.

“Yeah, Mum on her own would not be doing well.” Wayne drains half his can and lies down on his back. “Got any fags, Lew?” A shout of laughter drifts across them from one of the other groups of the Meadows.

“I’m supposed to provide booze _and_ fags?”

“You didn’t provide booze, did you?” Derek says. “Your new friend did.”

Dan flushes and twists the tab on the top of his can. He hadn’t let Lewis pay for the two sixpacks. “Shut up, Derek,” Lewis says mildly, and Wayne says, “Yeah, shut up, Derek.” Julian laughs.

“Fags, Lew?” Wayne says, and Lewis extracts a crumpled pack from his pocket and holds it open for Wayne to take one. “Cheers.”

“You got a lighter?” Lewis asks, lighting his own cigarette.

“Yeah, cheers.”

“Can I have one?” Austin says. “I’ll owe you, Lew.”

“Yeah, whatever, here you are. Anyone else?”

“Got my own,” Derek says, and Julian just shakes his head. “What about Dan?” The question isn’t entirely pleasant.”

“Don’t smoke,” Dan says. “I’m a... rower?”

“Right, of course you are. What school d’you go to?”

“Derek,” Lewis says, with a long drag on his cigarette.

“Wickham Boys’,” Dan says, drinking from his can and hiding behind it.

“Oh, _nice_ ,” Derek says, and Dan frowns.

“I’m at Shepton Tertiary,” Austin says, unexpectedly. “Or I was, just finished my A2s.”

“Oh, what did you do?”

“PE, Media and English Lang & Lit, what about you?”

“English Lit, History and Latin,” Dan says.

“Latin. Must have been difficult,” Julian says.

“No, uh, not really. Not that bad, anyway.”

“And you’re going to Cambridge?” Wayne says, and Derek snorts.

“Yeah, in, uh, two weeks.” Dan glances at Lewis. “What are you doing, Julian?”

“Oh, I work at a printing firm, innit.”

“A really poncey printing firm,” Lewis puts in, taking a drag from his cigarette, fingers loose and relaxed.

“Yeah, whatever. A bit.”

“So how did you do?” Dan asks Austin.

“C, C, B,” Austin says.

“And you’re happy?” Dan says, and he hopes it comes out how he means it, an honest enquiry as to whether he should be congratulating Austin or commiserating with him.

It seems to have come close, at least, because Austin just says, “Yeah,” and Dan feels it’s safe to respond to that with, “Well done.”

Austin salutes him with his can of cider. “How about you?” he asks

“Uh.” Dan takes another swig from his can, wishes he could avoid the question. “All A*s.”

There’s no negative reaction from Austin, but there is another snort from Derek and a whistle from Julian. Austin just says, “Well done to you, then, innit.”

“Yeah, thank you,” Dan says, and flops onto his back, staring up at the night sky and the few stars that can be seen in London, even the suburbs of London. Over his head, he hears the conversation return to Wayne’s sister, and he feels Lewis shuffle another, almost imperceptible, inch closer.

***

Dan meet Lewis’ mother accidentally, dropping Lewis off a few streets away from his flat at the same time as a large woman is coming out of the sidestreet that leads to Lewis’ estate. Lewis winces when he sees her as he gets out of the car, and two seconds later her shrewd eyes catch on Lewis, and then slide sideways onto Dan. They’re the same blue as Lewis’, and her face, under the blurriness produced by soft flesh, is the same sharply angled face. Dan knows who she is immediately.

“Lew,” she says, and Lewis shoots an agonised glance at Dan.

“Hey, mum,” he says. “Going to the shops?”

“Yes, sweetheart.” Her voice is cheerful. “Is this the boy Jerry has been raving about?”

“Uh. Hi, Mrs -?” Dan steps forward, hand extended.

She shakes her head as she shakes his hand, says, “Call me Cheryl.”

“Cheryl. I’m Dan. Hi.” Dan fumbles, because there has rarely been anything but love in Lewis’ voice when he mentions about his mother, and he’s pretty sure that mishandling this exchange as badly as he apparently handled his first meeting with Wayne would produce an explosion. He can see Lewis watching him carefully from the corner of his eye.

“I’m sorry my partner is such an unreasonable man,” Cheryl says, with a roll of her eyes directed towards Jerry. Dan’s not sure what to say, because ‘unreasonable’ is putting it mildly, he rather thinks, so he just nods and smiles. He wants to demand why she stays with him, why she lets Lewis be upset so much that he doesn’t feel he can stay at home, but this is not his family, and there’s a soft regret in her eyes as they rest on Lewis which suggests that the answers are not straightforward.

Lewis says, “Don’t, mum,” and Cheryl nods.

“So, Dan, you and Lewis.” There’s a delicacy in the way she says it which abruptly reminds Dan that she knows that Lewis is gay.

“Uh, yeah,” Dan says, and Lewis says, “Mum,” again, not in the playfully protesting way that Dan says it to his own mother.

Cheryl shoots a glance at Lewis, and there’s the flicker of a smile over her face, both amused and sad. “Okay, okay, Lew, I’m going, I won’t embarrass you anymore. Are you... will you be around tonight?”

“Yeah,” Lewis says. “Got my keys. See you later.”

“See you,” Cheryl says, and walks away from them down the street.

A second or so after she rounds a corner, out of sight, Lewis says fiercely, “She doesn’t embarrass me.”

“Okay,” Dan says, and that seems to be all that’s necessary, because Lewis’ hand catches his for the briefest of squeezes.

“I’ll see you later,” he says, and Dan nods and says, “Later,” as he gets into the car and watches Lewis leave.

***

Dan surveys his room. He’s supposed to be making inroads into his packing, according to his mother, and the thought of deciding what he needs at university out of this tumbled, jumbled mess makes his heart sink and his brain screech in its groove, overwhelmed by everything that needs to be thought about and done. He has two bags and the box in the corner, and he’s been told firmly that he needs to try not to overflow them, which he’s pretty sure is easier said than done. There’s still a week until D-day, but he thinks that week will probably pass in a flash.

He stares at his worldly possessions for a minute or so longer, and then takes his phone out of his pocket and hits the two buttons that let him call Lewis. Lewis picks up quickly, sounding sleepy. “Hey.”

“Hey, sorry, too early?”

“Nah, ‘s okay,” Lewis says. “Had a night shift last night. What’s up?”

“I’m staring at my room, and I don’t know where to start.” Dan knows he sounds miserable.

“And you called me?” Lewis sounds pleased and surprised.

“I... yeah.” Dan hadn’t even thought about it until now, but normally he would call Titan in this kind of situation, where he feels like he’s hemmed in by a wall built of the bricks of his obligations and responsibilities and jobs and to-dos, and he needs someone to help him deconstruct some of it.

“I don’t have many thoughts to offer about the process of packing for university.”

“Got thoughts to offer about anything else?”

“I don’t like curry goat,” Lewis says promptly, and Dan laughs a little.

“You’ve been eating Jamaican food?”

“Austin’s Jamaican, I was round at his last night and I asked if I could stay for tea.”

“Oh, I didn’t realise.” He’s kind of glad he didn’t know when he met Austin, it would have been awkward after the initial feeling of companionship. Austin’s probably actually Jamaican, whereas Dan is less than half, and the only effect of Jamaica in his life is the food his dad sometimes cooks. He doesn’t even remember his Jamaican grandfather, and his dad’s got no other family and has never been to Jamaica himself. Dan imagines what Austin’s face might look like after hearing this litany of cultural disconnect, and upgrades ‘kind of glad’ to ‘very glad’. “Why’d you ask him?”

“Dunno,” Lewis says, and Dan grins.

“Was it because of me?”

“Whatever. Anyway, curry goat. Not great.”

“I’ve only had it once or twice, I think it’s kind of a special occasion food.”

“Austin said it’s for Sunday dinner, but his mum cooked it for me. She thinks I’ve got this sudden massive interest in Jamaica, she was delighted.”

“And Austin?”

“Thought I didn’t want to go home for tea. So I suppose both of them were right.”

“You at home now?”

“Yeah, not many friends who’d let me in at four in the morning.”

“I would have done,” Dan says.

“Whatever, needed to go home anyway. Mum’s doing okay, but she gets stressed if I stay out for more than three nights.”

“Jerry?”

“I’m not really talking to Jerry.”

“He must have seen you with black or whatever friends before, I mean, there’s Austin and Julian at least.”

“Yeah, and he was a dick about them, as well.” _And I never left home for it_ , Lewis doesn’t say but they both hear.

“Right.”

“He’s all bark and no bite, I think it just gives him things to complain about with his mates in the pub. ‘God, these fucking immigrants, they’re _everywhere_ ,’” Lewis says, imitating someone’s deeper voice. Dan laughs a little, but it’s not really that funny to him. “So, packing,” Lewis says, yawning, maybe hearing Dan’s discomfort.

“Yeah, packing. I just...” Dan runs a hand over his hair and says, a little wildly, “I just don’t know what’s important, I can’t decide, and there’s so _much_.”

“Yeah, but anything you leave behind can get sent on, right?”

“I – yeah.”

“Or you can come back and get it, it’s not like Cambridge’s the moon.”

“Yeah, I’ll... I’m going to be coming back often, anyway. Right?” They haven’t really talked about how it’s going to work, but Dan assumes he’ll be spending most of the money.

“I... hope so.” Lewis sounds a little startled and soft. “That would be nice. If we’re really going to try this.”

“You can back out any time,” Dan says. “Like, I’d get it, it’s not like we’re serious.”

“I feel like,” Lewis hesitates. “I feel like we _could_ be. So. Let’s see.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I think that’s a good plan.” Dan is smiling, staring at the mess of his room, the vast amount of things that he just _can’t possibly_ live without, and it feels like maybe it’s going to be easier to do this than he thinks it is.

***

Titan and Fergus come over mid-afternoon the next day, ringing Dan’s mobile and hanging up five times before he makes it to the back gate to let them and their bikes in. “For fuck’s sake,” he says, when he opens the gate to their grinning faces. “We have a fucking doorbell.”

Fergus puts his phone back in his pocket and pushes past Dan, leaning his bike against the wall just inside the gate. “The doorbell’s on the _front_ door, Danny, I don’t know if you’ve noticed.” Dan punches his shoulder, and gets a hard tap to the back of his head in return.

“It’s very inconvenient,” Titan agrees, but he reaches over to box Fergus’ ear with a grin at Dan. Fergus dances out of reach.

“Knew you’d try that, Lash!” he crows. “You’re Dan’s _hero_.”

“Nice to be someone’s hero,” Titan agrees placidly. Dan punches him instead of Fergus, but it barely makes an impact against the solid wall of muscle that makes up Titan Lash. He smiles sunnily in Dan’s direction.

“Can we go for a row, then?” Fergus asks.

“Yeah, sure, whatever,” Dan says. “You guys bring the rowlocks and oars through, I’ll get the keys from the kitchen.” He lets them precede him through the house, an oar over each of their shoulders, and sticks his head into the kitchen, where his mother is reading the Guardian. “Mum?”

“Mmmm.”

“We’re taking Puffin out.”

“Mmm,” Melissa says, not really looking up from her tea and newspaper and slice of cake. “Don’t sink her.” Dan huffs a sigh of wounded pride and unhooks the keys for the dinghy from the wall.

***

The tide is more than halfway down, and it takes a minute of pulling and lifting and high-stepping over mud and Titan whining over the state of his shoes before Puffin is in the water, unlocked from her buoy and rowlocks in place. Dan holds her for the other two to hop in, a clumsy operation. Fergus immediately takes the middle bench, proclaiming, “Bagsy I rowing,” and Dan rolls his eyes before he does a simultaneous push and jump manoeuvre that tumbles him into the boat and sends her far enough into the stream to free her from the river bottom. “Where to?” Fergus asks, settling the oars into the rowlocks with a heavy clunk and starting to pull powerfully against the tide, taking them upstream.

“The island,” Titan says from the stern, and Dan nods in agreement, enjoying the sunlight gleaming from the rich murky green of the river and the chatter from the pubs on the bank.

The island is a tiny narrow thing in the centre of the river, mostly used by nesting geese. It’s technically the property of the Waterways Governance Authority, but no one cares. Dan’s had low-key parties there before, and it’s been an integral part of his growing up, since he and his friends got old enough and big enough to take Puffin out by themselves.

It takes less than two minutes at Fergus’ pace to reach the steps up the bank, and Dan hops out to moor the boat, giving her enough slack that he won’t need to readjust her mooring for a couple of hours. Fergus and Titan are out and past him almost before he’s finished tying the knot, oars left neatly in the centre of the boat, and Dan follows them up and the steps and into the knot of trees which top the island.

Right in the centre, there’s the remnants of something old and concrete. When Dan was younger, he thought it might be something exciting, but now he knows it was probably a WGA goose observation point, or something else equally lacking in glamour. Whatever it was, it’s nothing anymore but some broken-down slabs, a place for teenage boys to sprawl in the late afternoon sunshine as it squeezes its way through the choking tree branches. “Remember that time Neil got pissed off,” Titan says, “and decided to take the boat and row home?”

“Oh God,” Dan says, sinking down beside him, “do you remember negotiating to get him to come back? He was off his face, as well.”

Fergus is grimacing. “I was so fucking sure we were going to be stuck here. No one had their mobile.”

“I did,” Dan says. “But I’d dropped it, we realised it wasn’t working.”

Titan grins. “You can _rot_ with the _fucking geese_ ,” he says, a mocking echo of a four years gone Neil, and it startles a deep laugh out of Dan, remembrance of the moonlight and the irrational panic and the tiny, furious Neil in midstream and the frantic scrambling of attempted persuasion settling around him.

“He doesn’t remember it,” Fergus says. “It’s a fucking shame, he’d be embarrassed forever if he did, but he just shrugs if you remind him.”

“Bet he does,” Titan says. “Bet a million billion.”

“I’ll take it!” Fergus cries, and laces his hands over his stomach with a grin.

“He came back, though,” Dan says after a few moments of contented silence.

“He did,” Titan agrees. “Not even at his angriest and most pissed would Neil Fraser actually abandon us on an island to rot with the geese.”

“He’s going up the day after tomorrow,” Fergus says, and there’s something small in his voice. “It’s last pub time tomorrow.”

“Christ,” Titan says. “We’re really... well.”

“Yeah.” Dan doesn’t see what else there is to say. This is really happening. They’re really never again going to row in the same boat, never again going to sit in the same classroom, never again going to be where they are, how they are.

“We’ll still see each other,” Fergus says, the tiniest ring of an anxious note in his voice. “I’m not letting you fuckers get complacent. You’ll come to Edinburgh, we’ll have a lads’ night, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Titan says peaceably. “Banter.”

“We’ll be back in the holidays.” Dan scrapes at a patch of yellow lichen. “It’s all good.”

“Yeah,” Fergus agrees, but he doesn’t sound settled and Dan can’t quite either. Of course they’ll all see each other again, _of course_ , but they won’t be the same people they are right now. Something is ending, and the low melancholy threatens to choke him for half a second with the realisation that even if he wanted to, he couldn’t stop it.

And then Titan says, “Stop moping, you fucking losers,” and Dan shakes himself out of it and punches Titan in the side. Titan twists, lightning fast, to catch Dan in a headlock, which makes Dan whine, “Stop being a _bully_.”

“Yeah, Lash, stop using your freakish height,” Fergus says, from his safe position away from them.

Dan elbows Titan in the side and twists hard, but Titan is almost entirely unmoved, until Dan squirms enough that he can get tickling fingers under Titan’s armpit, which makes Titan wriggle and choke on a laugh and relax his grip enough for Dan to eel free.

“You’re such children,” Fergus says loftily, and Dan waves a lazy V at him, breathing a little harder with the brief exertion and grinning at Titan. Titan grins back, face softening for a moment with affection, and Dan is glad for the sudden certainty that they will probably always be able to do this. He flops back down on his back, almost exactly as he was before but without the weight of sadness pressing his chest, and says, “Who’s going to row back for food?”

***

 _r u leavin on sun?_ Lewis texts late that evening, when they’re back in Dan’s house, sprawled on the sofa. Fergus and Titan are playing FIFA, and Dan is watching and making unpleasant comments.

 _yeah_ he texts back. _hang out tomorrow? x_

_i cd come rnd nw, just finishd a shift. x_

_k. fergus n tite here also. x_

_its ok if ur busy._

_come rnd, do u nd a lift? x_

_n. there sn. x_

“Lewis is coming,” Dan tells Fergus and Titan. Fergus pauses a second, but when Titan just grunts in response, he goes back to the game with a nod.

***

Lewis is there about half an hour later, Dan’s father calling up the stairs, “Dan! Lewis!”

“Come up, Lewis!” Dan shouts from his bedroom door, and smiles when he hears Lewis’ light feet on the stairs. Lewis appears on the landing, and Dan says, “Hey,” and inexplicably leans forward for a quick kiss. They don’t do hello kisses, but Lewis doesn’t protest, mouth bumping softly against Dan’s for half a second before Fergus, because he’s a dick, wolf-whistles.

Dan turns around to glare at him, and Titan thumps his side without taking his eyes off the screen. “Hey,” Lewis says quietly from behind Dan.

“Hey,” Titan says, and Fergus nods and smiles.

There’s not enough space on the sofa for him and Lewis, so Dan drags his huge beanbag over and drops down into it, hesitating for a hopefully imperceptible second before he gestures to Lewis to join him. Lewis’ hesitation is not imperceptible, brief flicker of his eyes towards the boys on the sofa, but Dan gestures again, and Lewis sits down, a little cautiously. It’s impossible for the two of them to sit comfortably without curling into each other a little, Lewis’ foot over Dan’s ankle and the back of his head against Dan’s shoulder. Dan puts an arm around him, loose over his chest, and they settle with a couple of wriggles.

Titan is genuinely not looking at them, and Fergus is consciously not looking at them; the difference is obvious in their respective postures. Dan ignores it, and it only takes a moment more of playing the game for Fergus to sink back to his previous sprawl.

“How was work?” Dan asks Lewis, quietly.

“Shit,” Lewis says. “My feet hurt, and I’m not being paid enough.”

There’s a moment where Dan wants to talk about long-term plans and opportunities and possibilities, but he pulls it back, and says, “Yeah,” instead, a soft exhalation against Lewis’ hair.

“Oh you FUCKER,” Titan says from the sofa, as Fergus does something cunning, and Lewis starts and then says, too low for Titan or Fergus to hear, “Christ, you really are out.”

“Yeah,” Dan says, and then honesty forces him to add, “Never really been this... whatever, before.”

“Oh.” Lewis is smiling, Dan can see the round curve of his cheek and the indent of his dimple.

“What are you losers muttering about?” Fergus asks, and Dan smiles at him over Lewis’ head.

“Nothing, Murray, fuck off and play the game.”

“Sweet nothings,” Titan says almost simultaneously, making a kissy face at Fergus.

Fergus says nothing, but presses some buttons on his controller quickly and then grins broadly at Titan’s wail of despair. Lewis laughs, too quietly to hear, Dan can only feel the shake of his shoulders, and Dan settles back into the beanbag and feels the soft rise of contentment in his chest.


End file.
